


even in the dark (we will find a way out)

by Cafelesbian



Series: tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Steve Rogers, Recovery, Service Dogs, Tenderness, so much tenderness you wouldn't believe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2020-07-09 15:24:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 34
Words: 209,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19890052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cafelesbian/pseuds/Cafelesbian
Summary: “I’m scared,” Bucky whispers. The words are packed; scared doesn’t begin to cover the impossible panic that’s still washing over him, waning and then slamming him again, so much it makes him dizzy.“I know,” Steve whispers back, “I know. It’s okay to be scared, Buck. Nothing bad is gonna happen to us, baby, not anymore.”Still reeling from the Alexander Pierce attack, Bucky and Steve, together, grow and recover and work to heal.Then the past comes for them.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> HEY I SAID I'D BE BACK AND I'M BACK HERE WE ARE FOR PT 2
> 
> Okay if you're here and you haven't read [tell me how to breathe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15826482/chapters/36847347) I seriously suggest you start there, I guess arguably it's not necessary? You'll probably catch on but you've missed quite a bit so if that applies to you I'd say start there, but if you feel strongly about reading established relationships only or something than you'll probably be fine here.
> 
> If you HAVE read tmhtb, hey ;) we're back for some more! some things
> 
> 1) The trigger warnings apply a lot bc A LOT of this is about recovering from abuse and obviously, discussions and some vague descriptions of the abuse are part of that, it's about on par with the way it's written about in tmhtb for comparison, slightly less for the first few chapters, but do keep that in mind always
> 
> 2) Idk if you guys remember my editor Cia but we're dating now lmao she's been reading this for weeks she's the best and i love her a lot and i'm really lucky to have her and so are all of you bc she has been my number one consultant this entire time

_October, 2013_

Steve is out the first night it happens.

It’s a Friday. Bucky is home in their apartment, the Brooklyn one that they’ve lived in for the last three months, already half-asleep on the couch with Penny curled up next to him, when he hears something; movement in the front area, pacing, the creak of a gate, too clear to just be the street. He thinks, at first, that Steve is home, so he shifts a little to smile at him when he comes in. It’s not until maybe ninety seconds later that he wonders if it could be something else.

Anxiety thrumming through him, Bucky gets up and looks out the window. Their front area is still and untouched, October chill making it look a little glasslike, but there’s no one there.

Bucky bites his lip, scanning it again. The gate is swinging a little, like it’s been pushed hastily open. Bucky’s breath catches, and he grinds his eyes shut. When he opens them, it’s stopped.

 _Don’t be stupid,_ Bucky tells himself, frustrated, hands curling into fists. _It’s the wind. Someone walked by. Get it together._ Then, softer, gentler with himself, the way Jennifer would tell him to, _Calm down. It’s just anxiety talking. There’s no one out there looking for you, it’s just a reflexive reaction from bad experiences._

But it doesn’t stop panic from rising in his chest, cheeks flushed with it, and before he knows it he’s crossing the living room and the dining room to the kitchen and curls his fingers around the handle of a knife, and for a minute his home looks foreign and dangerous. Bucky squeezes it, bracing himself for _something_ , the shrill cry of the doorbell or insistent banging or someone’s hands on him, but nothing comes.

Slowly, Bucky lets go of the knife and slumps back against the counter. He takes another few deep breaths, wrapping his arms around himself slowly. Penny comes up to him, sitting at his feet, lifting a paw to scratch his leg. Shakily, Bucky exhales and sinks to his knees so he can pet her; she nuzzles close to him, sniffing and licking his face, tail swinging back and forth. He takes another breath, more solid, coming back to himself.

“Good girl,” Bucky mumbles, and she licks him again, staying close, and he keeps scratching her behind the ears. “Thanks, Pen.” 

Bucky picks up his phone and tries to convince himself not to call Steve, but before he knows it it’s pressed to his ear, hand shaking a little, the other one running through Penny’s fur. He bites his lip.

“Hey, baby.” Steve’s voice, muffled through movement. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, wincing when his voice comes out more fragile than he’d meant for it to. “Y—yeah, sorry, um…” He doesn’t want to say _when are you coming home_ , but Steve hears the shudder in his voice and knows something isn’t right.

“Buck, I’m walking home now,” he says gently, and Bucky swallows his relief. “What’s going on?”

Bucky wants to tell him, but he imagines it, suddenly— _I heard a noise outside and got fucking terrified and now I can’t stop panicking_ — and he bites it down, shame flushing him. He bites his nails; they’re painted, right now, pale purple; it’s a bit of a thing, started a few weeks ago, when he told Jennifer that he got a lot of comfort out of taking care of himself, pretty, soft, clean things that made him feel safe, and she asked if he’d ever done it before. He likes it, now.

“It’s stupid,” Bucky mumbles, scrubbing a hand over his face, “sorry, sorry, I’ll see you in a few—”

“You want me to stay on the phone?” Steve asks him.

“Do you—do you mind?”

“‘Course not.” Even through the phone, Steve’s voice is warm. “I’m about ten minutes away. Tell me about your night.” 

He’s trying to make sure Bucky stays present, keep him talking and distracted, keep his head clear and focused on something definable. Jennifer has recommended that a lot. “It was alright. Wanda says hi. She’s still a little sad about the breakup.”

On the other end, a hum of resignation from Steve; he hadn’t liked Jarvis either. “Wanda deserves way better than him, talking to him was like watching paint dry,” Steve declares. Bucky laughs, a little shakily. “What’d you do after she left?”

“Um. I wrote a little. I baked us cookies. Watched some of _The Bodyguard_ , it was playing on some channel—”

“Jesus, Buck,” Steve laughs, “no wonder you got nervous. I couldn’t sleep for days after I watched that.” Bucky swallows and nods, relaxing a little. He’s right, of course. It’s nothing, overworked nerves and exhaustion turning the wind into a threat. “What kind of cookies?”

“Pumpkin-chocolate.”

“Have I mentioned how in love with you I am?” Steve says.

Bucky pictures him grinning. It makes him smile, too. “How was Sam?” Bucky asks him. He’s breathing slowly, the way Jennifer has imprinted on his brain for when he feels like this, and it’s starting to help; the anxiety wanes, little by little by little.

“He’s good. Got a crush on some girl he’s friends with but he won’t tell me her name or ask her out. I told him he was being an idiot about it and I’m sure she’d say yes. He said he didn’t want relationship advice from someone who found their person when they were six.” He can hear Steve smiling, and Bucky laughs again. He likes that. _His person_. “Okay, baby. I’m coming up the block, I’ll see you in a sec.”

It’s been about five minutes, which means Steve walked faster than he had to. Warmth spreads through Bucky’s chest, unthawing him a little. “Okay. Thanks, Steve,” Bucky says softly.

“‘Course, baby. Be right there.” Steve hangs up. For a moment, the silence is so monumental and huge that Bucky feels it inside him, this eerie weight in his bones, until he hears the front door pull open.

“Buck?” Steve’s voice sends a wave of relief over him. He’s still kneeling on the kitchen floor, Penny’s head in his lap; she perks up at Steve’s voice, and Bucky pets her head.

“In here,” he calls weakly, and he hears footsteps and a moment later Steve appears and takes him in; pale, kneeling on the ground, Penny close against him, and worry washes over his face.

“Baby, baby, hey.” Steve sits next to him, wrapping his arms around him. “It’s okay, Buck, it’s alright.” He nods, leaning into Steve. 

Penny nudges Steve’s hand until he gives her a pat. “What happened?” he asks gently, combing his fingers through Bucky’s hair. 

Bucky swallows. “It’s nothing, it was just—it was so stupid—”

“Hey,” Steve says, pausing to kiss his forehead, “don’t say that. If it upset you, it’s not stupid.”

Bucky tells him, not looking up. Steve’s shirt is soft and warm, hands light on Bucky’s back, and he allows himself the feeling of being taken care of even though he knows how pathetic it sounds. 

When he’s done, Steve holds him for another moment. “It’s not stupid, Buck. You just got scared. It’s okay. Everything’s okay, we’re safe, yeah? I’m sorry I wasn’t here, babe.”

Somehow now that Steve is here he can’t stop shaking. It hasn’t been this bad in a while; the nightmares and panic attacks and flashbacks are still there, and they’re still awful, but since moving and adopting Penny and seeing Jennifer twice a week, they’ve gotten tamer. _Sometimes,_ Jennifer had said, _a big part of recovery is just knowing how to manage the symptoms, not expecting them to vanish completely_. He thought he’d been managing alright, all things considered, but now frustration slams him, blinding, nauseating fury at himself that still rears its head inside him sometimes.

A lot of Bucky feels just _in-between_ right now. In between recovering and remaining debilitated with misery and trauma, in between accepting and being kind to himself and hating himself so vehemently that he can’t look in the mirror for days, in between days when he feels okay, when he’s even happy, and days when pulling himself out of bed is an olympic task and all he can do is replay bad, bad things, over and over, until he’s shivering and in tears and half-lucid. He ricochets between which Bucky he’s going to be when he wakes up until he can’t remember how to decide or if he has a decision and he ends up at some heavy, quivering combination of the two.

He feels sickeningly exhausted all of a sudden, the worst kind of exhaustion, the kind that drags itself through him, agonizingly slow, but that won’t let him sleep, the wired-up exhaustion that leaves his insides feeling buzzed and unsettled. 

And Steve knows, because Steve knows all of him. “Hey,” he says gently, rubbing between Bucky’s shoulders, “how about I make us some hot chocolate and popcorn and we can watch Parks and Rec?” 

“Okay,” Bucky mumbles, into his shirt. “Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, babe.”

So with gentle hands and soft, soothing words and a movie screen smile, Steve pulls him back to the Bucky he wants to be.

***

Bucky and Steve moved to Park Slope in late August. It was decided on in a thirty-second conversation in bed, Bucky’s head on Steve’s chest, half-asleep when Steve asked him, suddenly, if he wanted to leave the Upper West Side.

“What, now?” Bucky groaned.

“No, like, should we move?”

And that got Bucky to sit up. “Where’d you have in mind?” he asked, and Steve shifted himself up on the headboard and smiled tiredly.

“Brooklyn?”

It sent this fond, nostalgic, ache through Bucky that he couldn’t quite place. “Where in Brooklyn?”

“I mean, it doesn’t have to be Brooklyn,” Steve reasoned, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind Bucky’s ear. “But if it were, I thought Dumbo? Or Park Slope? Maybe Red Hook?”

Bucky thought about that for a moment, gaze fixed on Steve. “I could get behind any of those,” he told Steve, and then, with a small smile, “I could really get behind anywhere, as long as it’s with you,” and Steve had grinned and kissed him and they’d agreed to look at real estate the next day.

They chose Park Slope because they wanted a townhouse and Dumbo was all condos, and Bucky didn’t like Red Hook since he used to have a regular client who lived there and the thought of running into anyone from the past sent panic surging through him (he’d been anxious, explaining that to Steve, so much that his hands shook, but Steve just held him and kissed his forehead and reassured him they wouldn’t go there).

The new place is a redbrick, twelve rooms stretched out across three floors one block down from Prospect Park and one block up from Seventh Avenue and all of its cafes and shops and restaurants. It’s an old, pretty building: ivy stretches over half of it, grazing the huge arched windows that frame the living room and their bedroom, a staircase, curved left at the bottom, leads into a tall, dark oak front door. There’s a lantern in the front area, permanently flickering in the midst of their tiny garden.

The living room is this huge, bright front room. Three tall curved windows stretch from the polished wood floor to the ceiling, cushions arranged in all of the windowsills. It’s all exposed brick, wall to wall, and they’ve covered a lot of it with some of Steve’s art and some framed photos and plants that dangle from hooks that Bucky insisted on buying. Their TV is set discreetly in the corner on top of its table just beside the fireplace, in sight of the sofa and the four or five loveseats and chairs they’ve organized around the coffee table. They spend a lot of nights curled up on that couch, mugs of tea still steaming on top of the coffee table, trying to muster the energy to head upstairs to their room.

The bedroom is laid out exactly the same —three tall windows and exposed brick and warmth— but where the living room bleeds into their kitchen and dining room, the bedroom is closed off by a fourth wall. They’ve got their bed set in the center of the wall adjacent to the windows, flanked by their respective bedside tables On Bucky’s, right now, is a water bottle, a copy of _The Body Keeps The Score_ that Jennifer told him he should read, a vanilla candle, and some lilies Steve bought him. On Steve’s is a miniature sketchbook full of drawings of Bucky, asleep and the view from their window; he sketches sometimes when he can’t sleep, a copy of _The Road_ because Bucky suggested it, a photo of the two of them that Nat took a few weeks back, the moment just before a kiss where they were both laughing.

Across from the bed, they’ve set two tall bookshelves, packed with novels and trinkets and a couple of photographs they’ve stacked on one of the shelves. Penny’s bed is propped on the bench at the foot of theirs, but more nights than not she curls up at their feet and they wake up with their legs numb from her sleeping on top. These walls are punctuated with more art and photos and a full length mirror that they’ve hung, and two ivy colored armchairs sit under the windows, miniature table in between that they set trays of breakfast in bed on some days.

The kitchen is separated from the living room by the dining room, a long, dark table underneath a few hanging, bare light bulbs. That’s where Bucky is right now, leaning against the counter as he waits for the coffee to brew, pale morning light beaming in. It’s his favorite part of the house. The back wall is entirely glass, looking out over their deck and backyard, which right now is little more than dead leaves and patio furniture and an empty birdbath, but in the spring is, according to the overly enthused realtor, “as pretty as the Botanical gardens, but less full of tourists” (Bucky remembers, distinctly, forcing himself not to look at Steve so he didn’t burst out laughing, and having to swallow it when Steve squeezed his hand lightly). The kitchen island is dark oak, and right now has a big glass vase of sunflowers on top of it that Steve bought Bucky the other day, and they match the cupboards. They’ve painted the few feet of the wall that weren’t brick red (it was a good night, music streaming through the air, red staining their skin, kisses that smeared the paint all over their faces). 

Upstairs, they’ve got the main bathroom, huge and bright white and (Steve’s favorite part) lit up by flickers of blue and red and green by a big stained glass window right above the tub. They’ve spent a lot of nights in that clawfoot, in clothes and with an inappropriate amount of bubbles for two adults, and Bucky loves it. The shower is a big glass box on the other wall, stacked with soaps and body wash and whatnot scented lavender and orange and every other sweet flavor because Bucky’s found comfort in that lately, in long warm showers and sweet, safe smells, and since he told Steve that Bucky keeps finding new ones left along the shelf for him (and soft sweaters, and various nail polish bottles, and flowers, because Steve is the eight wonder of the world). Steve’s studio is up there, too—— _theirs_ , Bucky corrects himself, because it’s split—painting supplies and graphic design tablet and pencils on one side, desk and laptop and half-filled notebooks on the other. They spend a lot of days in there, sun filtering in, filling the space between them with glowing warmth, quietly working, breaking the rhythm to cross the room and give the other a kiss on the cheek or grab lunch or take Penny out. 

There’s a basement, too, but they spend the least time there. Steve works out there sometimes, punching bag and treadmill and weights having made the cut for moving, but other than that it’s just the guest space that their friends will occasionally crash at when they don’t wanna travel back to Manhattan.

The novelty of it hasn’t quite worn off. Bucky has to remind himself, often and firmly, that this is his life now; he’s got his name on a house deed, he’s here with Steve, in this beautiful home that they made together. They’re happier here. Bucky couldn’t believe the difference it made at first—living, sleeping somewhere where he wasn’t half-convinced Alexander Pierce would turn up in the lobby with a gun, signing a paper that told him even if Steve did decide he was done, he couldn’t legally kick Bucky back to the streets.

(Not that he ever, ever would, but the conviction was there, squeezing around his throat, _not enough_ hissing through him. It’s still there, some days, but it’s easier to wrestle down.)

They combined finances (or, rather, Steve got Bucky’s name officially on his bank account after weeks and weeks and weeks of pushing him to accept it) just before purchasing it. They’d gone to Chase, talking to a woman who explained, a hint of judgement in her voice, that they should probably wait until after they’re married, until Steve retorted, “We’re gonna get married,” with such finality that she decided it wasn’t worth arguing.

Right now, Bucky pours himself a cup of coffee and goes to stand at the back wall, staring out into the garden. Steve is out on a run in Prospect Park with Penny; he’s been out about forty minutes, which means he should be back any second. It’s cloudy out; everything looks woven out of a silvery thread, delicate and still. Bucky blinks a couple of times, shaking his head, but it doesn’t clear the fog, so he has another sip of coffee. It’s a strange morning. He’s still lethargic from the panic last night, and more than that, he can tell it’s gonna be one of the worse days, the days where he can’t shake the heaviness clinging to his bones, where shadows are going to send terror pulsing momentarily through him. It’s different than how the bad days used to be; it isn’t usually the constant, unceasing panic twenty-four/seven that it had been before where he was too anxious to ask for anything and couldn’t be touched for a long time; that’s still there, sometimes, but it’s interspersed with calm or happiness or this strange, immovable sadness that’s more passive than anything else. It’s better, he supposes, but it isn’t good.

(Bucky, in frustrated tears, _I think I’m broken, I think I’m just too fucked up to get over any of it, I still feel so fucking bad_. 

Jennifer’s voice, calm, understanding, firm _You aren’t broken, Bucky. What you’re feeling is so normal. This isn’t going to be an instant process.. It’s not the kind of thing that you can expect to vanish in a few months or a year. You were being hurt for years—it’s going to take time to heal and process and manage it all. That’s okay. If there are setbacks, and times when it feels counter-productive, that’s all part of it. You’re still making progress._ )

He hears the turn of the lock and spins around; Penny bounds in, rolls around on the rug for a moment, shakes herself off, and pads over to him. Bucky smiles and gives her a rub. “Hey, babe!” he calls, so Steve knows he’s up.

“Hi, baby!” Steve shouts back, and appears a moment later, smiling. 

He strides over and leans in to kiss him and Bucky ducks him, smirking. “No, you’re all gross, go take a shower—”

“Hey!” Steve pouts. “Penny, you don’t think I’m gross, right, you’ll give me kisses—” And he bends down and lets her lick his face, as Bucky laughs. “She loves me, Barnes.”

“Glad someone in this house does,” Bucky says dryly, and Steve fake-scowls, straightening up. “Now it’s all sweat and dog saliva, I’m definitely not kissing you.”

Steve scoffs, and, just a little too fast, steps towards Bucky and he flinches before he can catch himself, and Steve pulls away, eyes softening, and watches him.

“You okay?” he says gently. Steve knows him, can see the forcedness in Bucky’s reactions, can see how he’s working double time to appear okay.

Bucky shrugs, straightening up and leaning against the wall. His fingers tighten involuntarily around the mug. “Yeah,” he says, shrugging, “I don’t know. It’s just, um.” A pause. Steve reaches a hand out; Bucky takes it, weaving their fingers together. “It’s just—I don’t feel good, right now.”

And Steve gets it. He nods, squeezing Bucky’s hand. “Is there anything I can do for you, baby?”

Sometimes, the answer is _hug me for a while_ or _tell me about your newest painting_ or _walk with me_. Right now, though, Bucky doesn’t know what he needs. A lot of the time, when he feels like this, all he can do is wait for it to pass.

“Not really,” Bucky tells him, squeezing back. “Thanks, though.”

“You’re seeing Jennifer today, right?” Steve confirms with him, and runs his thumb up the length of Bucky’s index finger. Bucky nods, some of the anxiety ebbing; it will help, talking to her.

“At three,” Bucky tells him, and Steve smiles and nods. “And, uh, class with Wanda at one.”

For the last three weeks or so, Bucky and Wanda have been the only non-couple in a couple’s Italian cooking class in the West Village. It’s the third one they’ve done; they did Japanese first, and then a vegan one, and now this one. After Pierce, Bucky started baking and cooking a lot; it helps, clears his head, gives him something solid and palpable to focus on when he can’t get grounded otherwise. He got her the first set of classes as a birthday gift after she mentioned wanting to learn how to cook more food, and they liked it so much that they did another, and on and on. It’s been good, that time laughing with Wanda and whatever retired couple they were seated next to, having something to work at and get better at, something he can finish and be satisfied with himself after. It’s been good going home after and making whatever he’d learned with Steve, clumsy instructions and misshapen rolls of dough when they do it together, feeding each other little samples off of spoons, Steve, kissing him and laughing, _god, baby, this is world-class_.

“Nice,” Steve answers, and then, “Quiet night, you think? We can take our girl for a walk, order in, catch up on _The Americans_?”

Bucky smiles at him, a rush of gratitude filling him. “That sounds perfect,” he tells Steve. Steve smiles, lifting their clasped hands to kiss Bucky’s knuckles, and so Bucky lets a little of the heaviness go.

***

He asks Wanda, while they’re rolling dough into long strands of pasta, if she saw anyone when she was leaving the house. He knows by now it’s just paranoia, but he wants to hear it from her, for one more person he trusts to confirm he’s got nothing to worry about.

“I don’t think so.” Her hands are covered in flour, so she pushes her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “No one I noticed, anyway.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, and takes a breath. He’s being so stupid to drag this out.

 _Think about the evidence you have to support the anxiety-driven thoughts, and the evidence you have against it_ , Jennifer will say, in forty-five minutes when he sits down in her office. So he does.

All is okay.

***

Steve’s getting groceries when a text from Tony comes in— _hey kid, thanks again for agreeing to tmw. Looking forward to seeing you and b_. He’s about to respond and ask what the hell he’s talking about, and then checks the date and remembers that months ago, he agreed to donate something to an auction for Tony’s foundation; he thinks it was a painting, or maybe a commission, but he can’t for the life of him remember. It comes back to him as he squints at the text; annual gala, charity fundraising, et cetera, et cetera.

He doesn’t want to go; that’s his knee-jerk reaction. He doesn’t need to be there while they auction off whatever it is he offered, doesn’t want to deal with the conversations he’s been having at every gala or opening or event since the trial and the catastrophic aftermath of it, _really_ doesn’t want Bucky to have to deal with it. He thinks, vaguely, that he might have gone the year before, and once he remembers that, he gets flashes of the night; him, leaning against a wall by the bar, a few too many vodka tonics into the night, talking to a smaller guy with dark hair and blue eyes who looked like Bucky when he squinted and trying to decide whether or not to go home with him, people he didn’t know congratulating him on some exhibit he’d had, sitting next to—he remembers this with a start—Alexander Pierce and his wife and listening to him explain why universal health care was a bad idea, nodding blankly and trying to mask his disgust.

He can’t bail now, though. He gives Tony a response to let him know he’ll be there, as if he hadn’t let it drop off of his radar for four months, and heads home to break it to Bucky.

Bucky is already there, doing something at the oven, humming a little to whatever is playing in his headphones while Penny lies at his feet, working at a bone. He leans against the doorframe for a moment and watches him, adoration surging through him, the same, soft _I love you you’re so perfect you make me so insanely happy_ rhythm repeating itself.

It’s just. Sometimes, almost a year out from when Bucky stumbled out of that alleyway and into Steve’s life, from when he whispered Steve’s name in a small, hollowed-out voice that unthawed and untangled Steve’s heart in half a second, Steve still has to step back and remember that he’s here. It was all he had wanted for four years, all of his eleven-eleven wishes and untouchable daydreams and now he’s here in their home, here in Steve’s arms, here because they found each other again, and when he thinks about this, about how a year ago, he hadn’t had Bucky and now, he does, emotion floods him, a hundred thousand pinpricks of color in his soul at Bucky’s sheer existence, at Bucky’s loveliness and at Bucky’s presence, right here in their home, right here next to Steve. Bucky, who a year ago, had flinched when Steve looked at him, who had whispered _It’s twenty for a blowjob, fifty for sex, a hundred if you want me to stay over_ , who’d gone submissive and pliant when Steve pulled him home without thinking, is here in their kitchen, baking and listening to music and wearing a soft blue sweater that belongs to Steve, Bucky who kissed him awake this morning and giggled against his lips, Bucky who has all of him, every piece of his heart and soul that’s ever existed or ever will. Steve heard, once, that your body understood anniversaries, and he thinks it might be true as he stands there, watching the love of his life. He doesn’t believe in God, or anything, really, but Steve sends a silent thank you to the universe and smiles.

When Bucky sees him, he startles and flinches—Penny jumps up—and Steve immediately kicks himself. There are things he knows so well from this last almost-year with Buck they’ve become part of his everyday habits, same as waking up at seven and brushing his teeth; he doesn’t touch him below the waist, he doesn’t touch him without asking if he dissociates really badly, he doesn’t call him James even as a joke, he doesn’t sneak up on him. The slip-ups rarely happen anymore, but occasionally, Steve forgets that Bucky’s always reeling.

“Sorry, baby,” Steve says gently, wincing, “didn’t mean to startle you.”

Bucky braces himself against the counter, yanks his headphones out. “It’s okay,” he says, with a little smile. “Hey, Stevie.” Steve walks over to him, bending down to kiss Penny first, then Bucky, on the cheek. Bucky hugs him, leaning his cheek light against Steve’s shoulder, sighing a little.

“Okay?” Steve asks, combing his fingers gently through Bucky’s hair.

Bucky nods. “Yeah. Tired.” But he smiles up at Steve anyway.

“Good class?”

“Mhm. Gonna make you fresh pasta this week.” 

“And I’m gonna somehow love you more than I already do,” Steve replies, and kisses his nose. Bucky giggles, this beautiful, clear sound that sends a thrum of warmth through Steve. “How was Jennifer?”

“Good,” Bucky says, leaning against him again. “I told her about last night and she talked about, like, why it maybe happened. It helped a little.”

Steve leans down to kiss him again, his forehead this time. “Good,” he says gently, and Bucky nods. “Guess what?” Steve says, grinning at him. Bucky raises an eyebrow. “Girl Scouts were hanging out at Union Market today. I stocked us up.” And he pulls out two boxes of Thin Mints and stacks them dramatically on the counter.

Bucky laughs. “If you didn’t get Samoas, Rogers…” And he trails off with a smirk as Steve pulls out another two boxes. “God, I love you.”

“What kind of boyfriend would I be to not get your favorite, Barnes?” He scoffs. Bucky rolls his eyes and pecks Steve on the lips, hands soft still against his arm, so Steve smiles and melts against him. Bucky breaks away, pushing on tiptoes to set it on the top shelf, straining his wrist, and Steve smirks. “Need some help there?”

Bucky snorts. “Nope. I’m great.”

Steve plucks it from his hand and reaches to highest shelf easily.

Bucky fake-scowls. “Show-off.”

“It’s not my fault, baby,” Steve says, and grins. 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I liked you better when I was taller, you know—”

Steve laughs. “Oh, so seventh grade?”

“Exactly.” Bucky grins, laying both arms over Steve’s shoulders slowly, tilting his head back to smirk up. “You’ve just been downhill since you hit your thirteen-year-old growth spurt. The amount I like you is directly opposite to how tall you are.”

Steve pouts, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s waist. “Have fun reaching those yourself when you want them, then,” he replies, and Bucky shrugs.

“I will.” Bucky kisses him quickly and smiles.

“What were you singing?” Steve asks him, pulling him closer.

Bucky blushes, glancing down. “None of your business, creep—” He trails off with a laugh as Steve glances at the album on his screen.

“Beach Boys, huh?” Steve laughs.

Bucky shoves him lightly. “Shut up, it’s a great song.”

But Steve laughs again, and pops in one of the headphones, then hands Bucky the other. “C’mere, then,” he says warmly, as Bucky pops the earbud in and presses play. Steve locks their fingers together, tilting his forehead down to touch Bucky’s, and sways with him, eyes closed, Bucky letting out a happy little breath and relaxing against him. “Hey, Buck?”

“Hm?”

“God only knows what I’d be without you.” It earns him a light kick on the shin.

“You’re actually crazy, you know that…”

“Crazy for you, baby.” 

Bucky shakes his head, face glowing with love, softening Steve around all the edges. “Love you, idiot.”

Penny whines below them. “Aw, Pen, do you not like seeing your parents in love?” Steve says to her, and Bucky bursts out laughing.

The song has ended, so Bucky plucks out Steve’s headphone, then his. “Can we order sushi tonight?” Bucky asks, giving him a little smile.

“Yep.” Steve pulls out his phone to place the order. “Ah, shit,” he says, remembering, and Bucky looks up, worried. “Doesn’t matter right now but before I forget, I forgot that tomorrow is Tony’s gala thing and I said I’d be there” —Bucky grimaces sympathetically— “and you don’t have to go, obviously, if you don’t want, but—”

“Babe, of course I’m gonna go,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes. “Not leaving you alone there.”

Steve grins and leans against the counter. “God, I wanted you to say that.”

And Bucky laughs again, and winds his arms back around Steve’s neck, and contentment fills Steve to the brim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You already know I’m a bitch who loves comments!
> 
> Cafelesbian on tumblr :^)


	2. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tws for panic attacks and non-descriptive flashbacks

Tony’s gala is hosted in the ballroom of the Mandarin Oriental, this swanky hotel by Columbus Circle that he used last year, too. By the time he arrives, Steve still doesn’t want to be there, but he’s sunk into resignation and when he looks over, Bucky is holding his hand and smiling at him and he can’t be too upset. They’ve got Penny with them, and Steve stuck a bowtie on her vest, so right now she’s sitting up straight next to Bucky, observing the room.

Tony, somehow, materializes about fifteen seconds after they show up. “Steve,” he says, wrapping Steve in a quick hug, and then, doing the same to Bucky, “Barnes.” He glances down and gives Penny a quick head rub. “And my favorite member of the Rogers-Barnes family,” he declares, as she wags her tail. “Thanks for comin’, guys. Uh—you’re at table six, I think, it’s by the window, Banner’s over there, remember him?” —he gestures, vague and important— “come, grab a drink with me, Pep will be happy you’re here…” Tony is walking, still talking, so they follow. “Babe! Steve and Bucky are here!”

Pepper is standing by the bar, looking lovely in a floor-length red gown that she sweeps to the side to greet them. “So good to see you,” she says, and kisses them each on the cheek, and Tony tucks an arm around her waist, flagging down the bartender.

“I’ll have a Manhattan, and a seltzer, and, uh—Steve, Bucky?”

“Seltzer, please,” Bucky says, nodding, and Steve gestures for two. They don’t drink much, anymore, and never anything more than a glass of wine at home with friends; too much history, too much anxiety around it all.

“Three seltzers,” Tony says, thrusting a twenty into the tip jar.

Bucky blinks at Pepper. “You’re not…?”

And she smiles. “We aren’t telling _anyone_ yet, but…” She touches her stomach, elated, and Tony beams at her.

Steve stares at Tony for a second, then grins. “That’s incredible,” he tells them, and hugs each of them quickly, while Bucky smiles and does the same.

“Congrats, guys, you’re gonna be amazing parents,” Bucky adds.

Tony smiles and kisses Pepper’s cheek. “Well anyway, that’s why we moved the wedding up to next month, can’t be having a kid out of wedlock…” Tony smirks, as Pepper slaps him lightly with her clutch. “Alright, alright, I gotta go host this thing, I’ll talk to you later…”

And they leave Bucky and Steve there, amused. “Tony Stark, having a kid,” Steve muses. “That’s incredible. When I met him he’d just met Pepper, even he didn’t think they were gonna last, he used to be such a player…”

“You’re one to talk,” Bucky informs him, smirking, and Steve pouts.

“Hey, I was _missing_ you…”

Bucky laughs, and pushes up on tiptoes to kiss Steve quickly on the cheek. “Wanna go sit?” he asks, and Steve nods, pulling an arm around his waist.

The night is, all things considered, completely fine. They haven’t seen Bruce in a long time, and he’s easy enough to chat with, and he doesn’t bring up Pierce even though he hasn’t seen them since it all happened (which, at this point, is a fucking godsend for them). They get a couple of long looks from colleagues of Tony’s who knew the Pierces, but no one asks them about it or makes a snide comment and after a little while, Bucky relaxes into Steve’s side, Penny laying on the ground beside his seat.

Steve, it turns out, had offered up a painting of whatever photo the highest bidder decided. It goes for eighty thousand, which makes him feel slightly sick to his stomach, but Bucky reminds him that all of it is being donated and he lets it go. The shrieking, unforgettable _wealth_ of the room becomes grating after a while, the sharp glint of jewelry and the swish of gowns and conversations full of nothing starting to close in on him.

“Wanna get home?” he murmurs to Bucky. They’ve been there long enough that no one will miss them.

Bucky nods; his eyes are starting to go bleary with fatigue and boredom, and Steve figures he looks the same. It’s been a long night; he’s ready to crash, so Steve wraps a gentle arm around him and waves to Tony across the room —he gestures _I’ll call you_ — and they head out.

Outside of the elevator, someone yells, “Hold it!” so Steve presses down on the button. The guy smiles; he’s tall, slicked back, long black hair, dark green suit, the kind of face that might be attractive, but it’s hard to tell. Steve nods at him and turns back to Bucky.

The guy, though, clears his throat. “Steve Rogers,” he says, raising an eyebrow, nodding. “Bucky.”

He feels Bucky’s fingers constrict, very slightly, in his. Steve gives him a slight smile that probably looks like a grimace. “Sorry, have we met?”

“We haven’t.” He sticks out a hand. “Loki Odinson.”

Steve blinks. “You’re Thor’s brother,” he says after a moment, taking his hand. He’s met Thor a couple of times, various parties and a movie set that he’d done paintings for. He likes him; for someone so famous, he’s rather sweet, always smiling, always chatting with Steve, even sent him a nice text after the Pierce news broke. He remembers him saying something about a brother.

Distaste flits over Loki’s face, but he shakes it off. “Yes,” he says, tone clipped, “but right now, I’m interested in talking to you two.” He steps closer. Penny stands, putting herself between him and Bucky; that’s part of her training, not letting men she doesn’t know come too close until Bucky tells her to sit. Right now, he doesn’t. Steve glances at Bucky, and his face is guarded, wary.

Loki doesn’t wait for a response; they’re already down a few floors, and he can tell they aren’t going to wait around. “You two,” he says, raising his eyebrows, “have had quite the year, haven’t you?”

Bucky tenses. Steve sets his jaw. “Yeah,” he says coldly, “not that it’s your business—”

Loki rolls his eyes slightly, like Steve’s agitation isn’t even worth his time. “Don’t worry, Steve, I’m not trying to cause problems. Believe me, I’m only thrilled Alexander Pierce got what was coming to him” —Bucky winces, and Steve steps forward a little more, protecting, warning— “and that’s what I was hoping to ask you about.”

Bucky is gripping Steve’s hand too tightly, now. “What do you want?” Steve snarls, and Loki backs off a little, but doesn’t stop talking.

“It’s quite the story,” he says, eyebrows raised. “High school sweethearts, ripped apart by fate, one of you gets famous, one of you” —he catches the glower Steve throws him, and swallows, looking almost sheepish for a moment— “Anyway. You get back together and take down a CEO in his apartment?”

“We remember,” Bucky snaps, speaking for the first time, voice shaking a little. “What’s your point?”

Loki says, “I work with a lot of filmmakers. The biopic opportunities are endless, you know.”

A beat of silence. The words take a moment to hit, lingering, suspended in the air for a second as Bucky and Steve realize what he’s saying.

“ _No_ ,” Steve snarls, and it comes out harsher than he’d thought. His free hand, he realizes, has curled into a fist, and Loki eyes it nervously, but doesn’t pull away. “Are you _fucking kidding me_? This isn’t—it’s not a fucking story.” He’s so angry, so totally stunned by it that it’s his voice trembles, viciously quivering, the rim of a glass on a shuddering table.

Loki looks unsurprised. He crosses his arms and leans against the wall, grimacing again. “You don’t have any interest in expressing your side of it? People would love to see. The directors I’ve talked to have cast ideas already—Bucky, James Franco’s been mentioned for you, but I see you more as a Robert Pattinson—” They’re close to the ground floor, seven more floors, and it can’t fucking come fast enough.

Steve stares at him, outrage starting to light up in him, bristling and hot. “Get away from us,” he hisses, his voice low. “You’re sick. You wanna—you wanna exploit—” He’s furious, furious at the apathy on Loki’s face and the nonchalance in his tone as he discusses he worst things that ever happened to them, the way he pried and researched and picked apart Steve and Bucky’s life for some fucking Hollywood stunt. The elevator has stopped, the doors pulled open in the lobby, but Steve’s ready to lay into him, to shame him until his stupid goddamn smugness melts into guilt. He watches Steve, calm, blinking boredly, unphased, and it sends another spark of anger twitching under his skin.

Then, very, very quietly, Bucky mumbles, “Steve, don’t, let’s go, please, let’s just go…”

Another rule Steve has made for himself: When Bucky says no, especially like that, he always, always listens.

Steve draws back again, keeping his gaze fixed coldly on Loki. “Tell your director friends to stick their biopic idea up their asses,” he snaps, and turns away, squeezing Bucky’s hand gently. Bucky squeezes back, almost going limp with relief. When they’ve got a few feet between them and him, Steve tugs an arm lightly over Bucky’s shoulder and casts him a long, worried look— _you okay?_ —which Bucky responds to with a blank nod.

“You know…” Loki calls, and Bucky flinches hard, drawing closer to Steve. He grits his teeth and swings around, eyes narrowed. “That directors don’t need your permission, right?”

And this time even Bucky turns, eyes widened, caught off guard. Loki smirks a little, strutting towards them again. “Come on. You think Jordan Belfort signed off on _The Wolf of Wall Street_? Please.”

He’s caught them momentarily astonished. For all the sadists Steve has faced with Bucky, all the fucking monsters darting in and out of courtrooms and saying awful things and dragging a blunt knife right through the middle of their lives, he hadn’t prepared for this, some Hollywood creep telling them that what they went through was being thrown around as a fucking film idea. He blinks a couple times to be sure he isn’t dreaming it.

Bucky is blinking too, breath caught, eyes glassy. “Why are you doing this to us?” he whispers finally, his voice small. Steve swallows, because that’s exactly what he wanted to say, only he wanted to growl in with a hand on Loki’s throat.

Loki blinks, looking between them. “Don’t look at it that way,” he finally says, condescending, “this is an opportunity, you get to tell the world your story—”

“Don’t you think,” Steve interrupts, louder than he’d meant to, “that if we wanted to do that, we’d have found another way?”

Loki sighs. “Look. I’m telling you now that at some point, this is gonna be made. It’s too good of a story to pass up on. If it’s not a movie in a few years, than a miniseries, or a documentary… I don’t know. So if you want to have any control over it, you should get in touch. ” He sticks a business card in the pocket of Steve’s jacket, claps them both on the shoulder; Bucky flinches hard, terror flickering over his face, Steve jerks forward to get him to back off, and Penny steps forward and pushes him back gently. Even Loki seems to realize how poorly thought out that was, because he raises both hands, a brief apology. Steve casts him one final look of disgust before turning away with Bucky.

***

In the back of the taxi, Steve is yelling on the phone.

Well, not yelling, exactly. He never yells around Bucky; he knows how much it scares him, even if it isn’t directed at him, but he’s talking heatedly into his phone to Clint, who’s tiredly trying to calm him down.

“…no way that it’s legal, right, he can’t—that’s not allowed,” Steve is saying desperately, and he keeps running his hands through his hair. Bucky wants to reach out and comfort him, but his limbs feel too heavy. Penny is stretched across both of their laps, rutting her head against Bucky’s arm to distract him.

“Steve,” Bucky hears Clint say, “can you just take a breath?” Steve makes a huffing noise that must have been enough for Clint, because he continues, “Look. I think you’re overreacting. People are interested in you and Bucky right now because everyone loves a crime story. I get interview requests and article propositions and whatever all the time for you. It sounds like now, they just went straight to the source. He says it’s just an idea, right?”

Light cuts briefly into the car, illuminating Steve’s frustrated face. Bucky makes himself reach over to touch his arm, and Steve’s expression softens a little. “The difference though, Clint, is that they fucking need our permission to get an interview. This guy made it sound like it’s already—like it doesn’t matter if we sign off on it or not.” 

A long, thick silence. “Well,” Clint says, “that’s… technically true.” Long, expectant silence fills the cab. Clint continues, “Steve, whatever they’re trying to do, it probably isn’t even gonna happen. It would take _years_ —”

“Clint,” Steve snaps, his voice stony, “I need to know this isn’t going to happen. Please. It can’t—they can’t just…” His voice, for the first time, wavers, oscillating towards breaking.

“I don’t know a lot of Hollywood people,” Clint says finally, “but I’ll see what I can find out about it, if this is a real thing that’s being discussed, okay? Send me that Loki guy’s number, too.”

“Okay.” Steve closes his eyes, leaning back a little on the seat. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, no promises. And if I were you… you know more people than I do, Steve. Talk to Tony, talk to Thor, see what they can do, alright?”

“Yeah,” Steve says absently. He’s relaxing; Steve is always calmer with a plan, with something solid he can count on to problem solve. Sometimes Bucky envies that. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Clint.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Steve. Take care, yeah? And say hi to Bucky.” Then the line goes dead.

“Shit.” Steve shoves his phone into the pocket of his jacket, whatever composure he’d gained dissipating. “ _Goddamn_ it.” At the anger in Steve’s voice Bucky pulls away instinctually, a feeble jolt of learned panic surging through him. Steve looks up, his face gentle. “Sorry, sorry, baby,” he says, grimacing apologetically.

Bucky swallows, leaning against him to let him know it’s alright, and Steve lays an arm around his shoulder. He feels Steve draw a tight breath. “We’ll figure it out,” Steve says softly, “it won’t… they won’t…” He trails off, and Bucky knows it’s because he has no idea what’s going to happen.

Bucky closes his eyes and nods. There’s a familiar, resigned dread growing heavy in his stomach, spiraling faster than he can control, and all he can do is lean against Steve and try to bury it.

***

Steve wakes up that night to Bucky screaming, this high, awful, shapeless sound that startles him into bolting up. It hasn’t happened like that in a while; when Bucky wakes up at night, lately, it’s usually quiet whimpers or mumbling and thrashing in his sleep, and it sends Steve into momentary panic until he shakes himself out of it.

He fumbles with the lamp beside their bed, blinking sleep from his eyes frantically. Bucky is curled over on himself, hands covering his face, shaking and mumbling. Steve knows he isn’t present enough to be touched, so he holds back.

It always hurts, having to do that. That part hasn’t gotten easier.

“Bucky, baby, it’s okay, it’s just a bad dream, breathe, baby, we’re at home, we’re in Brooklyn, it’s alright…” By now, Penny is up too, fully on the bed, rubbing her head against Bucky’s hands to try to get him to look up, but he isn’t responding even to her. Worry twists deeper into Steve’s gut.

Bucky finally looks up, a terrible, twisted jerk of his head, rearing away from some invisible force. His eyes land on Steve and go wide with terror, and an ache corkscrews through him. He draws back, raising his hands, meaning to show safety, to show he isn’t touching, but Bucky is too scared and too out of it and he sees hands raised just before they hit him and he gasps, “ _No_ ,” and before Steve can fix it he’s out of bed and has stumbled into the bathroom. Penny follows right away; Steve hesitates, then, desperate, and very, very careful, follows him.

Bucky didn’t even lock the door or turn the light on. He’s on his knees, rocking back and forth, pressed against the corner of the shower. Penny has started licking him, pawing him incessantly, whining to break him out of it, and it still isn’t working. Steve’s heart twists.

“Bucky,” Steve says again, very, very softly. Nothing. Steve bites his lip, inching closer. When Bucky doesn’t flinch away, he gets into the shower with him, kneeling a few feet away.

“No, no, no, don’t, I’m sorry, no…” Bucky whimpers. Steve exhales, shuddering.

Steve bites his lip again, debating whether or not to start the water. It’s worked before, to shock him out of it, but he doesn’t want to scare him any more than he already is. A moment later, though, Bucky chokes out a wrecked sob, and Steve knows he isn’t coming down from it.

Wincing, he reaches up and drags the knob for cold water down. Steve gasps at it, shivering automatically, but he doesn’t move away, doesn’t want to leave Bucky alone, and it works; Bucky brings his chin back up, blinking, shaking his head, and Steve stays still until Bucky gasps, “Steve.”

“Yeah, baby, yeah, you’re alright, it’s just me,” Steve answers, shoulders slumping with relief. Penny, even under the water, is still nudging at Bucky, and he reaches, finally, to touch her. 

“What—what happened?” Bucky whispers, his voice hoarse. 

“You just had… you had a really bad, um, flashback? I think… You’re okay, you’re good now—” Bucky wraps his arms around himself, shoulders shaking with tears. “Baby, c’mere.” Having forgotten, momentarily, that freezing water was raining down on them, Steve shuts it off. Bucky exhales shakily, clumsily moving towards Steve to lean into his arms. Bucky presses his face against Steve’s neck, winding his arms tightly around his middle, still crying a little; Penny keeps rubbing his shoulder, small, comforting motions that Steve copies over his back.

“I‘m sorry,” Bucky mumbles, and Steve shushes him.

“Hey, baby, let’s dry off and get warm and I’m gonna make you something to eat, okay?” Steve says gently. Bucky nods, taking another shuddery breath, and Steve helps him up with careful hands. Bucky is shaky on his feet, leaning against him a little, curling into his side. Steve lets him change first, waiting in the bathroom for a moment, until Bucky knocks quietly to let him know he’s done and heads downstairs to wait.

Steve changes fast, throwing on a hoodie and sweatpants, and when he gets downstairs, Bucky is at the counter, leaning over to rub Penny’s head. Steve gives her a quick scratch behind the ears and then bends down to kiss Bucky’s head lightly; he reaches up to squeeze Steve’s arm gently.

“Baby, you want some tea?” Steve asks quietly. Bucky hesitates, and then, a small nod. He’s gotten better at letting Steve take care of him when he has a bad night, but he’s still hesitant and apologetic and sometimes needs to be reassured that it’s okay, that Steve wants to help him, that the only thing in the world that matters is that he feels safe and loved and happy. “What kind?”

“Vanilla?” Bucky says quietly, glancing up for the first time. Steve nods, and smiles softly, and brushes another kiss against his forehead before turning to the cupboard. “Thanks, Steve.”

“‘Course.” He flicks the stove light on, casting the kitchen in a warm orange glow, and starts the water. Bucky is still looking down, face cast in misery and anxiety, scraping away at the silvery paint on his nails, and Steve reaches gently to stop him.

“I’m gonna make you waffles,” Steve announces to him. 

That gets Bucky to look up, a tiny, reluctant smile flickering over his face. “Don’t do that, it’ll…it’ll take forever—”

But Steve rolls his eyes and squeezes his hands. “Maybe, but you deserve them.” He turns again, this time to grab mugs and the tea bags and the waffle iron and to turn the stove off. He pours the tea, and adds Bucky’s two sugars to his and hands it to him, and Bucky’s eyes are shimmery with tears again.

Bucky stands, and pulls Steve into a hug, arms tight around his neck. Steve hugs him back, holding his waist, tugging fingers lightly through his hair. 

“You don’t, um—” Bucky swallows, letting his head fall against Steve’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do all this, you know.”

“I know,” Steve says simply, “but I want to.” Bucky’s eyes flutter shut, a small, relieved breath escaping him. He still looks pained, the fear from before remaining, heavy in his expression, so Steve keeps holding him until he pulls away.

As Steve mixes batter and cracks eggs and turns back every minute or so to give Bucky this impossibly soft, loving smile, Bucky feels his lungs start to untangle themselves. Steve loves him, the kind of love that makes Bucky feel so unspeakably safe that it brings tears to his eyes, the kind of love that makes him kneel in a freezing shower with him and not only come out of it not angry or aggravated or fed up, but comforting and gentle and making him his favorite tea and his favorite food just to make him smile.

 _I don’t think I’ll ever fully feel like I deserve Steve_ , Bucky admitted to Jennifer recently, very quietly. And she nodded and told him, _Unlearning the messages that you aren’t worthy of love and care and safety is a long process, Bucky, and when it’s something you’ve been hearing so brutally for four years, it isn’t the kind of thing you can just completely erase in a matter of months. But just because it’s hard to remember doesn’t mean it isn’t true._ He thinks about that now, as gratitude pushes tears up his throat. 

The flashback comes back to him in pieces. Alexander, of course, hurting him, hitting him, hands around his throat, gun against his head, a fucking supercut of all the terrible things he’d done to Bucky so vivid that it turned his home and Steve into weapons. His hands shake slightly remembering it, and he holds onto his mug tighter. Penny’s head is in his lap, and he keeps petting her.

After a few minutes, Steve sets down the plates and the food and even the butter and syrup, sitting beside him, rubbing up and down his back, working his fingers gently over Bucky’s shoulders. “It hasn’t been that bad in a while, baby,” he finally says softly.

Bucky winces. “I’m sorry.” It’s so automatic that Bucky doesn’t even think about it, that it isn’t until after that he knows it wasn’t the right thing to say.

“Buck, baby, no, don’t be sorry.” Steve keeps circling soothing, gentle patterns over Bucky’s back, and it calms him down a little. “Wanna talk about it?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Same as it always is,” he mumbles, and the sadness in his voice startles him. He’s glad Steve isn’t pulling away or moving closer or pushing him to talk, just keeping a soft, safe rhythm of touch that he knows Bucky can take.

Bucky is floored with love for him.

He knows the whole thing was triggered by Loki, and the unphased, careless flippancy as he talked about the unimaginable fucking horror that they went through and the way strangers wanted to see it neatened into a ninety-minute crime-romance that they could watch and consume and forget about. Bucky closes his eyes; this familiar, hideous thing inside him trembles—dread, resignation, the knowledge that what he wants doesn’t matter to the people calling the shots—a sensation he’s so used to that he almost doesn’t register it anymore when it starts.

He leans against Steve, which is a little hard when they’re sitting on separate stools, but Steve shifts in enough that it works. He doesn’t remove his hand, keeps it circling over Bucky’s shirt, gentle and not asking for anything in return.

“These are good,” Bucky finally says, nodding at the obscene amount of waffles Steve has left in front of him. “Thanks, baby.”

And Steve smiles, so much warmth in it that Bucky almost forgets the panic that’s still stirring insistently in his chest. “Anything for you, baby,” he says dramatically, and Bucky rolls his eyes and chokes out a laugh. “We got some for the morning, too.”

Bucky glances at the clock: 3:17 am. “Already is the morning,” he says, nodding to it, guilt crashing over him again. “I didn’t mean to keep us up…”

“It’s okay,” Steve says, gentle and without thinking about it for a moment. “You’ve got nowhere to be tomorrow, right?” Bucky shakes his head. “Me neither. So we’ll sleep in, and when we wake up we’ll eat the leftovers, and we’ll walk out and grab lattes at Gather, and then we’ll take Penny to the park, sound good?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. He finally gets himself to look up at Steve, and his eyes are soft and so beautiful, and Bucky takes a breath. “Okay, yeah.” Another pause. He pulls, somehow, closer to Steve. “I love you,” Bucky tells him, voice slipping to a murmur. Exhaustion is starting to sink in and pull him under again, and he feels Steve kiss his forehead.

“Don’t fall asleep yet, baby, let’s get upstairs.” There’s a chuckle in Steve’s voice.

“Mm, but you’re warm.”

Steve laughs. “I’ll be warmer under a comforter, I promise.” So reluctantly, Bucky lifts his head from Steve’s shoulder, and helps him pull the cling wrap over the rest of the waffles, and when they’re in bed again, the trembling has subsided from fatigue and comfort and he can bury it enough to fall asleep curled against Steve’s chest.

***

_August, 2013_

_Steve is home with Bucky, new apartment scattered with unpacked boxes and takeout cartons, when Sam calls him in the middle of the day._

_He raises an eyebrow, because usually, Sam would text him for whatever it is he needed. “Hello?”_

_“Hey, Steve.” Sam’s voice is tentative, cautious. “Um. Have you seen?”_

_Dread curls in Steve’s chest. “Seen what?” he says breathlessly. Sam exhales through his teeth._

_“Are you with Bucky right now?”_

_Steve looks up. Bucky is in the backyard, playing tug of war with Penny. They adopted her two weeks ago; Jennifer suggested a psychiatric service dog. She had a friend who trained them, and she mentioned Bucky to her and at this point, ‘Alexander Pierce case’ was still hot news and the friend had been more than willing to help. “There’s always a waiting list,” she had explained to Bucky and Steve when they drove up to her farm, “but Jennifer has helped me out so many times, and the least I can do is pull a couple strings for her.” Penny is two years old, a big, happy German Shepherd who, when they first met her, trotted up to them and rubbed against them and flopped over on her back for belly rubs._

_“She specializes in working with trauma survivors,” the woman went on, matter-of-factly enough that Bucky didn’t feel targeted. “She knows how to recognize panic attacks and dissociation, she can, if you need, keep people away from you, she’s trained to wake you up during nightmares, she can even turn on lights, go get medication or stress objects or whatever you might need.”_

_Right now, Steve watches them, biting his lip and pretending that if he stares long enough, whatever it is that Sam is talking about will dissolve._

_“Steve?” Sam asks, nervous. “You there? You’re gonna wanna hear this.”_

_“Yeah,” Steve says shortly, and closes his eyes. “Um. Bucky’s out back, I’m in the kitchen.”_

_“Okay,” Sam replies, with another hard breath. “Well, um. New York 1 got Bucky’s parents somehow, for an interview.”_

_Steve blanches, like he’d misheard. “No way,” he says, after a moment, and actually laughs, incredulous. “That’s… there’s no way. They haven’t talked to him in years.”_

_A staticy pause. “It’s them, Steve, I remember them from high school,” Sam says carefully. “It’s not, um… it’s not great.”_

_Numbness has sunken in by now, clipped disbelief ringing in his ears. “What the fuck,” Steve says flatly. “What did they… what’d they say?”_

_Sam sighs again. “That’s the thing. They didn’t, um— they didn’t say a whole lot about anything. Obviously, they just wanted the attention. But, um, they basically… I don’t know, they made it sound like it was his fault as much as they could without sounding like total pieces of shit, which they did anyway. Um, his dad said some fucked up stuff about prostitutes. They basically said even though obviously, Pierce was in the wrong for, you know, fucking kidnapping him, he probably made up everything before that.”_

_Steve buries his face in his free hand. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”_

_“I’m really sorry,” Sam says, a wince in his voice. “They, um—they talked about you a little, too.” Steve shouldn’t be surprised, but he is. He straightens up. “Nothing shocking, just that you got into fights in high school and you guys used to sneak around a lot. I don’t know. They basically just… just went after you and Bucky a lot. I think they were tired of being portrayed as bad parents in the media.”_

_“They are bad parents,” Steve snarls, and slaps his hand down on the counter. “They kicked him out and sent him to fucking conversion camp.”_

_“I know,” Sam says sadly. “I mean, they don’t come off well in this either.”_

_Steve grits his teeth, a sudden sledgehammer of pain splitting his head. “What the fuck,” he says again, and this time, his voice is thick with grief. “Haven’t they… Jesus Christ.” He looks back outside; Bucky is sitting, now, pulling his hair up into a bun while Penny rubs against him. “Haven’t they fucked up his life enough,” Steve says, and his voice cracks._

_“I know,” Sam answers quietly. “I’m sorry, Steve.” A thick pause: he can hear the hitch of Sam’s breath. “Um. It wasn’t just talking shit about him, though.”_

_Steve snaps his head up. “What?”_

_He pictures Sam grimacing, running a hand over the back of his neck. “Well. After they basically, you know, said he asked for it for half an hour, they said they were sorry about the way things went, and if they could” —he hesitates— “I think his mom’s phrasing was ‘find a way to repair things’ they would. And they said, um, that they forgive him. They really—they really laid the blame for the family falling apart on him.”_

_Steve says, for the third time in four minutes, “What the fuck.”_

_“Yeah. Yeah, it’s not great. I didn’t mean to drop it on you without him knowing, I kinda figured you’d both seen it—”_

_Steve isn’t really listening. He feels dizzy, lightheaded with anger. “They forgive him,” he echoes hollowly. “Jesus fucking Christ.”_

_He hears Sam swallow. “Yeah.”_

_“Shit,” Steve hisses, and scrubs a hand down his face. “Um. Okay. Fuck.”_

_Sam says, worriedly, “Is there anything I can do?”_

_Pinching the bridge of his nose, Steve mutters, “No, no, I don’t think so. Um, I’m gonna look at it, I guess.” He feels sick, and exhausted, and fucking outraged for Bucky._

_“Okay.” Sam still sounds worried. “Okay, well, let me know if there is, alright?”_

_“Yeah,” Steve says absently. “Yeah, okay. I’ll talk to you later.”_

_“It’s gonna be alright, Steve. Just… take care, both of you, okay?”_

_“Yeah,” Steve repeats, “Thanks, Sam.” And he hangs up._

_Casting another long look at Bucky, Steve pulls the interview up on his phone. It’s titled **Estranged parents of James Barnes speak out on Alexander Pierce, victim’s childhood, relationship with Steve Rogers** , which is already enough to set his teeth on a bladed edge. He stares at it for a long moment, head thick with anger and disbelief, this whirring, whining tug that he thinks he can shake off._

_Steve only gets through a minute and a half of it. He can’t stand it; it’s a bitterness that sucks him dry, that shakes him from the inside._ Why _, he thinks desperately,_ Why, why, why are they doing this, hasn’t he suffered enough. _It’s startling, seeing the Barnes’. The last time he’d seen them, he’d been waiting outside, slumped against their building, hands pressed over his face, praying for Bucky to come back, and Bucky’s mom had called the cops._

_They look several years older, but in the way that suggests they’re putting a lot of effort into not looking older for the camera. Growing up, Bucky’s family had no money; Steve can tell how hard they’re trying to cover that up, stiff, unnatural movements that they’ve picked up from fucking Downton Abbey or something and nice business clothes and an air that suggested they were comfortable, thanks very much. They would’ve hated the idea of Bucky having more money than them._

_Steve watches without really listening, startled at seeing them. He used to know them very well, had dinners with them and joined them on the few vacations there had been and kicked Bucky under the table when they made comments about how Steve was like a son to them, too, and he replied, “Yeah, Stevie, you’re like my brother.” He watches them now, and they just look miserable and pathetic._

_He turns it off when Bucky’s mom says, “We were shocked when he ran away.” He can’t stomach it, can’t stand one more person lying about him, hurting him and shaming him for no reason other than that they can. Steve leans over, elbows on the counter, and grinds his face into his hands._

_“Hey.” Bucky’s voice, careful and a little meek, from the doorway. Steve looks up, and gets a small smile from him. “What’s wrong?” He crosses towards him, touches his back lightly._

_Steve runs through his mind for the gentlest, least painful way to tell him, but everything flickers emptily so he just says, “Baby, I gotta tell you something.”_

_Bucky’s eyebrows knit towards each other, worried now. “What?”_

_Steve scrubs a hand down his face again; Bucky’s eyes go wide. “Listen,” Steve begins softly, “um. Your mom and dad…” Bucky’s face changes: it grows stoic, confused. “Baby, they did an, um—they went on New York 1.”_

_And Bucky blinks, quickly, the same cold astonishment Steve had felt. “What?” he says, and shakes his head. “That’s not—but I haven’t—”_

_“I know,” Steve whispers, and cups his face, fingers gentle and apologetic. “I’m sorry. Fuck, baby, I’m so sorry.”_

_Bucky is staring down now; confusion flits over his face, and then hurt, disappointment. He reaches up to touch Steve’s hand, lifting his gaze, eyes glassy with pain._

_“But…” Bucky begins, and trails off. Steve swallows, an empty smatter of sorrow twisting through his chest. “Did they… did they talk about him?” They haven’t said the name_ Alexander Pierce _in weeks, haven’t let him puncture their home like that, but Steve knows._

_“I haven’t watched it,” Steve says, thumbing along Bucky’s jaw gently. “But I—I think so.”_

_Bucky shuts his eyes, exhaling a quivering, heartbroken breath. “I wanna see it.”_

_Steve knew he would, but he grimaces all the same. “Are you sure, baby?”_

_Bucky nods, pulling closer to Steve. He’s shivering a little, so Steve hugs him._

_“Do you want me to watch it with you?” Steve asks, wincing a little. Bucky rests his head on Steve’s shoulder, an exhausted, defeated movement._

_“Do you mind?”_

_“No,” Steve answers, truthfully and right away, running a hand over his hair, “no, baby, of course not.”_

_So they do, standing at the counter, Steve’s arms wrapped around Bucky from behind, their fingers woven tightly together. It’s awful, condescending and judgemental and full of lie after lie after cruel fucking lie. They paint Bucky as this troubled teenager who wouldn’t accept their help, glossing conveniently over the four fucking months of conversion therapy they put him through, wreaking havoc with Steve until they split up. They make a couple of vicious comments about prostitutes and about how Bucky chose that over his family, about how they “weren’t sure” whether to trust him when they saw the Pierce news._

_“Of course I didn’t want him to be hurt,” his mom tells the reporter, and Steve catches guilt, thick and glaring as blood, on her face for a moment before she shakes it off, “but I just… I know him. I think it’s possible that the most recent… altercation, the one in the apartment was real, but the rest… I don’t know. There’s two sides to every story. I wish… I wish he’d talk to us.”_

_When it’s done, Bucky closes the computer slowly, hand shaking. He hasn’t said anything the whole half hour, and he opens his mouth now and before he can get a word out he’s just sobbing, breathless and so suddenly it startles Steve, miserable, angry tears that he chokes out against Steve’s chest as Steve holds him, swaying a little bit, hatred stirring sharply in his gut._

When he runs the next morning, Steve thinks about that. The press, speculating about them for weeks and weeks even after they fucked off to Spain for two weeks to avoid it all. Strangers, in cafes and parks and movie theaters, who stopped them and asked if they were the couple from the news this summer, like they were fucking entitled, like Bucky or Steve cared what they thought of the case. Bucky’s family, Loki. It’s fucking endless, the list of people who’ve tried to hurt them, to exploit them, to twist what they went through into some sensationalized, cheap thing that everyone can stare at and replay and offer an opinion on. He’s sick of it to the point that it’s grinding into his bones, stale, bitter unfairness that makes him want to scream _leave us the fuck alone_.

He’s gasping, he realizes, and he’s picked up the pace, so he slows again. He usually takes Penny, but he left her with Bucky this morning, not wanting him to wake up still shaken and alone. Prospect Park is quiet, gray and still in the late-October frost, unsettling. He starts towards home, the knot of anxiety in his chest loosened from the jog but not undone.

He’ll text Henry, later, and ask if he can meet sooner than their next session in two weeks. Loki stressed him out more than he realized, sent this dark, foreboding chill screeching through him.

Bucky is still asleep when he gets home, so he throws himself on the couch and tries Tony. It goes to voicemail. He debates calling Thor, but it’s a bit out of the blue and they haven’t talked recently enough for it to be justified, so he opens his messages and starts to craft a text that delicately says _tell your brother to stay the fuck away from us_. He decides on _hey, man, it’s been forever! Next time ur in ny we gotta catch up-- me and buck would love to have you for dinner. Weird thing—last night I met your brother at a party and he said a couple things to me and Bucky about some kind of biopic he wants made abt the pierce stuff this year. I hate to ask you for this but is there any chance you could find out if it’s serious? see you soon, I hope xo_. He sends it and hopes Thor reads ‘find out’ as ‘get it shut down as soon as possible.’

He gets a response five minutes later, while he’s scrolling through articles about life rights, which apparently don’t belong to the people whose lives are in question _Steve! Good to hear from you. My brother is quite the pain in the ass, but i’ll see what i can do. Full disclosure-- i did get asked by a director if i’d be interesting in playing you-- said no of course. Guess they’re casting for more attractive than in real life ;)_ Steve snorts. _sorry to hear that you’re dealing with all that. Would love to catch up-- i’ll be here for stark’s wedding in a few weeks so i’ll see you then, maybe a dinner?_

Steve is replying thanks, that sounds great, when Bucky comes downstairs, rubbing his eyes, flanked by Penny. “Morning, sunshine,” Steve calls to him, grinning, and Bucky flips him off.

“Not all of us are assholes who run ten miles at seven,” Bucky grumbles, with no malice, and sits next to Steve. Steve smiles, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and kissing the side of his head, so Bucky leans against him. “What are you doing?”

Steve hands him the phone. Bucky reads through the messages, huffing out a weak laugh at Thor’s joke, then looks up, his eyes anxious. “At least he said he’ll try to help,” Bucky says wearily, handing it back to Steve. He nods, grimacing. “Fuck,” Bucky says, and then, softly, “I hate this.”

“Me too,” Steve says, with a hard breath. He feels Bucky move closer to him, eyelashes fluttering against his neck. “Shit, Buck. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Bucky reminds him, tangling their fingers together. 

“You know what I mean,” Steve answers quietly. Bucky nods. Steve turns to him, voice softening. “You feeling any better?”

Bucky nods, a little hesitant. “Sorry about last night—” Steve cuts him off with a gentle, correcting look, and Bucky sighs. “You know what I mean,” he says, echoing Steve.

“Mm, nope.” Steve pecks a kiss to his cheek, and it gets a smile out of him. “Seriously, you okay?”

“Yeah.” The word shudders a little, some exhaustion behind it. “Yeah. Just… fuck. I hate when it’s like that.” His voice grows small, ashamed, and he drops his gaze.

Steve nods, brows furrowing. “It’s okay, baby. It was just a rough night.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says absently. And Steve kisses his forehead, but unease shudders through them all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm cafelesbian on tumblr as well
> 
> your comments last week made me so happy lahfdsdhga i thought people might be sick of this story so i'm just :') i love you all thank you for being wonderful


	3. three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hellooooo everyone
> 
> Tws for panic attacks
> 
> By the way! Someone messaged me yesterday to lmk that I had called Penny a therapy dog but she’s actually a psychiatric service dog so I’ve changed that! Thank you again for letting me know❤️

The second time it happens is two weeks later, and Steve is home with Bucky when it does. So is Monica Danvers-Rambeau. They’re on babysitting duty that night; she’s sitting on Bucky’s lap, giggling at Penny, and Steve is drawing pictures for her to color in.

Bucky and Steve have become rather close with Carol and Maria. It happened by accident. Steve and Bucky went out to this vegan joint (“If it weren’t for me you’d be living off instant ramen, Steve, get some culture. I lived on the street for two years and I’m classier than you.”) that Bucky picked, and they got seated, bizarrely, next to Carol Danvers and her wife. For a while, they played the polite, tentative game of pretending not to see one another—Carol, after all, had last seen them shell-shocked and bloodied, pressed against each other, gun in Bucky’s trembling hand, on Pierce’s floor, which didn’t exactly make for ideal dinner conversation. Somehow, though, they’d overlooked that tiny detail, and talked for several hours about family and work and their friends and relationships and what tv shows were the best and whether mini-golf was a sport and what it was like to grow up with parents who hated their kids for being gay (Carol, it turns out, knew just as well as Bucky and Steve), and by the end, they all swapped numbers and made dinner plans for the next week.

Steve and Bucky like them a lot. Maria is sweet, warm eyes and sensitive and smart with her words and quick and sharp with jokes. She’s a therapist, and it shows in the easiness that fills the otherwise impossible conversations with her, in the sweet, quiet way she has of listening that feels comforting but not patronizing. Carol has called her the caretaker of the group and she’s right; Bucky and Steve get texts from her, unprompted, in the middle of the week asking how they’re doing, if she and Carol can do anything for them, reminding them to take it easy.

Carol is rougher around the edges, blunter and more sarcastic and a little intimidating at first, until she decided she very much liked and trusted Bucky and Steve and softened to uninhibited grins and loose, easy arms thrown around their necks and fierce, wild protection that Bucky says reminds him of Steve. Where Maria’s presence is constantly balanced and easygoing and reassuring, Carol’s is wild and impulsive and vivid with warmth, white-hot electricity surging through her in every move she makes. The four of them went for dinner one night, a Mexican place in Downtown Brooklyn, and the couple at the table next to them had started the unbearable, relentless whispering that Bucky and Steve have grown miserably used to, throwing them dark glances and murmuring importantly and reading through Alexander Pierce’s wikipedia page trying to figure out if they’re the couple from the attack. Bucky and Steve turned away; Steve glared a little, half-heartedly, Bucky winced, and Carol turned to them and snapped, “Do you mind?” When they had the audacity to look affronted, she went on, “You know we can all hear you, right? You aren’t being subtle. You couldn’t have waited until you left the restaurant to google that?” 

As parents, Carol and Maria have come as close to perfect as they think is possible. Monica is three years old and adores Bucky and Steve, and they adore her right back. She’s sweet and smart and lives up to the nickname Carol gave her, “Lieutenant Trouble,” through her constant teasing and endless, blazing energy and ability to play for hours. They’ve babysat a couple times; she likes them because, as Maria would repeat to them later, “Bucky has a cool arm and makes me cookies and Steve is a good drawer and Penny is my friend!” 

They’re watching her at their house tonight, because Maria forgot that she told her college roommate they’d have dinner with her and her husband the week Carol and Maria’s kitchen is being refurbished, so everyone had to clear out. “We’ll order you whatever you want for dinner,” Bucky bribed her, when she gave her moms a hard time about leaving.

Her face lit up. “Can I get French toast?” she said, with the cute, childish inability to say the ‘r’.

“Of course,” said Bucky and Steve, and Carol said “Sure, babe,” which made Maria indignant. 

“We’ll get her to eat some fruit!” Steve promised her as they rushed out, and Maria rolled her eyes and smiled.

The french toast (and pancakes for Steve, and waffles for Bucky, because apparently that’s the kind of guardians they are) arrives while Bucky is helping her carefully color in a drawing of an airplane that Steve gave them, so Steve goes to get it. He takes a minute to watch them fondly; Bucky, gentle and warm and careful with a sweet little kid on his lap, gives him a vivid rush of love that’s almost too much for him, and for a moment he just grins at his future, until remembering there’s a delivery guy on their stoop in late October weather, and he hurries out. He grabs their mail on his way in, shoos Penny gently away from the door, and goes to bring them the food.

When he gets back, Monica has moved on from the drawing and is telling an attentive Bucky about her halloween superhero costume, and he’s nodding along and smiling and when Steve catches his eye, this sweet, delighted little grin comes across his face, and Steve is pretty sure that if there ever comes a shortage of light, all anyone would need is for Bucky to smile like that and they’d be set for eternity.

“Who,” Steve says dramatically, setting the bags down and mail and turning for the kitchen, “is ready for some breakfast?”

Monica giggles. “It isn’t breakfast time!”

Steve pretends to frown. “Then I guess all this breakfast food is for someone else—”

“No!” she shrieks, laughing, and Bucky and Steve beam at her. 

“Then I think we need to get ready to eat in here…” Steve heads into the kitchen for plates and cutlery, spreads them quickly over the coffee table for the three of them. Bucky is sifting through the mail, sorting aside bills and checks and invitations to things because thankfully, one of them is responsible, and he glances up to give Steve a quick smile before looking back down. Steve watches him fondly for a moment before unwrapping his pancakes and beginning to help Monica cut her french toast.

“Steve,” Bucky says suddenly, and his entire demeanor has rewritten itself so he looks worlds away from the way he had moments ago. He’s staring down, both hands on a piece of paper, face white and eyes wide and horrified and breath stilted in his throat so he sounds like he’s gasping.

Alarmed, Steve drops his fork and shifts beside him, placing a hand high on his back and looking, worriedly, down. He scans it quickly, and with a jolt of panic he understands Bucky’s terror.

_James,_

_Miss you, sweetheart_.

Steve stares at it, reads the four words over five or six times, blinking. Sickness rises in him, slow and thick as ebbing blood, unease filling the air, sizzling from every wire and outlet and pulsing electrically.

“What the fu—” Steve starts, and catches himself, throwing a glance at Monica. She hasn’t noticed; she’s busy letting Penny lick whipped cream off of her fingers. “What the fuck,” he says, under his breath, so she can’t hear. 

Bucky just shakes his head, a stunned, scared motion that catches Penny’s attention and makes her trot over to them and nuzzle him.

“Buck,” Steve says, soft and urgent, “where did that—”

Bucky’s voice has gone high and panicky. “The—this letter, it was just—just an envelope, there’s no address or anything…”

Steve’s heart ricochets in his chest. Before he can say anything like _we’ll figure this out, it’s okay_ or _let’s take Monica and get out of here_ or _who the fuck sent that_ , Monica takes stock and frowns. “What’s wrong?” she whines, looking, confused, between them.

Steve and Bucky share a sharp moment of remembering that they’re supposed to be in charge of a three year old, and Steve coughs. “Nothing, sweetheart, we just got a little surprised. Hey, do you know that if you hold up some waffle for Penny, you can get her to lie down and roll over?” And Monica’s eyes light up, and Steve gives her a weak smile and turns back to Bucky.

He’s staring down with a glazed, desperate sheen in his eyes, hands shaking. Steve takes a sharp breath and takes it gently from him, turning it over. Nothing else, no return address, no signature, not even their address.

It hits Steve a second late that whoever did this had to have dropped it there themselves. Bucky looks up, shivering, and Steve just feels blindsided, stunned into absolute nothingness that this could be happening.

He makes himself speak, finally, voice low so Monica doesn’t hear. “It’s probably—” Another breath. “Probably just some—some sick asshole thinking it’s funny, some kid, or something, who was bored—” But he doesn’t believe it, and neither does Bucky. He shakes his head, quickly, trying to recalibrate the world into something that explains this. “Carol,” he says finally, “she can help us, she can—when she gets here, we’ll ask—”

But Bucky isn’t hearing him, he can tell; his breath is thin and panicky, the way it gets after a bad flashback, like he’s trying not to cry, especially with Monica there. Steve takes a long, deep breath, pulling him in close. Bucky leans against him, shaking all over.

Steve tries, desperately, and while paying attention to a three-year-old, to rationalize this. He tries thinking one of their friends, playing some fucked up joke, but none of them would ever, ever do something like that. 

Bucky can’t breathe. While Steve holds him and rubs his back as he chokes down a panic attack, terror snakes its way around Bucky’s throat and squeezes, tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter until he’s gasping. _James, miss you sweetheart._ The words rise in his throat, tasting poisonous, and he wants to douse them in kerosene and light them aflame, not just the paper but the words themselves and their very existence, searing the inside of his brain, looping restraints around his wrist and hands around his neck and forcing their way into him while he screamed and screamed and screamed.

_James, miss you sweetheart._

Someone who called him James and sweetheart, but mockingly, possessively, not soft and sweet like Steve did, had written that, and come to their fucking home to drop it off. Someone who had scrawled it on a half-torn piece of paper, knowing what it would do to him, knowing that four words would be enough to send him spinning out into this endless, enormous pit of panic.

 _James, miss you sweetheart._

When he looks up again, Penny is there, licking at his face, and Steve is a few feet away, talking quietly to Monica, hands on her shoulders. “You know how sometimes you get a little sick, maybe you have a cold or a tummy ache? Right now, Bucky is just feeling a little sick, okay?” And her sweet little three-year-old brain accepts that as the reason the guy who’s supposed to be taking care of her is on his knees, hyperventilating, and she flounces off to keep eating and coloring on the other side of the room.

Steve comes straight back to him, waiting for Bucky to nod before he lays an arm around his shoulders. “Bucky,” he mumbles softly, “it’s okay, baby, it’s alright. Whatever it—whatever it is, it’s gonna be fine.” But he’s shaken, Bucky can tell. He keeps glancing at the window and at Monica and back where the fucking letter has been left on the table, and the hand that isn’t on Bucky is tapping frantic dots onto his knee.

He wants to say something, but he doesn’t know what, he doesn’t know what _James, miss you sweetheart_ calls for and right behind the terror is the shame, grainy, horrible shame that simmers under his skin so that he wants to rip it off. He tries, for a minute, to conjure up something that Jennifer would say, but even Jennifer would be fucking freaked by _James, miss you sweetheart_ so nothing comes, and he doesn’t realize he’s shaking his head until Penny starts nuzzling at his face again.

He takes a breath, kind of; a shuddering, terrified excuse for a breath, but it’s air pushed in and out of his lungs nonetheless. Steve saves him from having to figure out what the fuck to say.

“The handwriting… Do you know…?”

“No,” Bucky says, and his voice feels so small, sucked away into nothing. There’s a brief, thick moment of silence, so heavy it burns the air, and finally Bucky whispers, “It isn’t—it isn’t _him_.” Bucky hates that he knows that. He doesn’t want to remember anything about Alexander, let alone his fucking handwriting, but the careless, harsh lines on that paper aren’t his.

Steve lets out a small, punched-out breath, like he’d been hoping it would be Alexander. Bucky gets it; that’s the easy answer, the one that would make the most sense, the one that could be solved with an irate phone call to a prison in Manhattan. But it’s not; at least, he didn’t write the letter and come here, to their _home_ , and drop it through the slot for them to find.

Carol and Maria get there around eleven. They’re spending the night in the guest room; Bucky and Steve insisted it was ridiculous to get a hotel for one night of renovation, and they hadn’t argued. Monica is asleep on the couch, her stuffed cat hugged to her chest, and Bucky and Steve are lying together, very quietly, on the ground, Penny beside them. Bucky is curled as small as possible against his chest, his legs draped over Steve’s, both arms around Steve’s middle. Steve has one hand on his cheek and the other on his back, and they’re both moving softly, in quiet, gentle motions to comfort him. They haven’t said anything. There’s a terrible, fragile quality to the air that feels like if they do, the building will come crashing down around their ears.

Bucky startles out of his skin when he hears the gate swing open, and even Steve jumps a bit, but a moment later he hears Maria laugh and he relaxes, slightly. Steve kisses his head and stands, wordlessly, to get the door.

“Hey,” Carol whispers, stepping into Bucky’s line of vision and smiling, “how’d it go?”

“Oh, she was great, as usual,” Steve says, running a hand wearily through his hair. “Your kid’s the best.”

“Isn’t she?” Maria says, leaning on Carol to take her heels off. “She adores you, though. Thanks, guys, we’ll pay you in the morning…” She ignores Bucky and Steve shaking their heads. “Babe? You wanna carry her down?” 

“Yeah.” Carol crosses the living room, giving Bucky a light pat on the shoulder on her way to Monica, and lifts her daughter up. “Hey, sweetie, let’s get in bed, hm?” Monica doesn’t wake up, just lets her head loll against her mom’s shoulder, and Carol disappears into the staircase.

Maria sits on the couch and Steve returns to the ground beside Bucky. “How was dinner?” Steve asks, politely, and Bucky really doesn’t understand how he has the bandwidth for small talk right now.

“It was alright. You know, me and Carol realized we hang out with you guys a lot because every other married couple our age all hates each other,” —Steve snorts, and even Bucky smiles— “and this was exactly the same…” She launches into a story about her roommate and her husband fighting at dinner while she and Carol fight back laughter, but Bucky doesn’t hear it. His brain is still thick and painful and lit ablaze with fear from _James, miss you sweetheart_ , and as he thinks about it, he starts rocking himself, a desperate, pendulumic motion to try and get it to _stop, stop, I don’t want this I don’t want to be scared anymore, not like this, not now—_

He catches her saying, “...you know, they complained about their son so much we had to start making up problems Monica causes just to—” She stops, sudden and concerned. “Bucky? You okay, honey?”

Bucky doesn’t answer right away. He realizes Steve is kneeling next to him, a gentle hand running up his arm, murmuring reminders to breathe, and Penny is jutting at his chest and a moment later he realizes Maria is on his other side, telling him kindly, therapist-voice on, “It’s alright, Bucky, look at us, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, more to her than Steve, because humiliation is slamming him. He leans against Steve again, slumping into his side so that Steve pulls a tight, safe arm around him.

“Don’t apologize,” she says, and sounds genuinely unphased, “It’s alright. Everything okay?”

Bucky bites his lip. _No_ , but the explanation behind it feels kaleidoscopic, too big and too chaotic and too much to try and get his still-reeling brain to form an explanation.

So Steve comes in, like he always does, gentle and saving Bucky from pain. “We, um. We gotta tell you guys about something.”

Maria’s face shifts into concern. “Okay,” she says, and nods seriously.

Carol comes upstairs a moment later, pausing at the sight of the three of them on the floor, tilting her head. “What’s up?” she says, slight worry behind it.

Steve clears his throat. “Let’s go in there.” He helps Bucky up on legs that have been filled with quivering lead, and Maria and Carol join them. Bucky sits, slumping down onto one of their stools at the island counter, stricken with a defeation that’s knocked the air out of him. Steve sits next to him, rubbing his shoulders with one hand, and Carol and Maria hover on the opposite side, watching them nervously.

Steve tells them about it. The letter has been left in the kitchen, placed to the side like something to be monitored, carefully and intensely, because it might erupt. When it’s done, Carol lets out a sharp breath. The kitchen is lit up all wrong, dim orange lights sending shadows moving too fast, looming and eerie, over all the walls, nothing like the other night, when Steve had held him and kissed his forehead and made him tea and waffles until the panic dwindled. 

“Shit,” Maria says softly, “oh, god, guys. I’m so sorry.”

“Okay,” Carol says, running a hand through her short hair; her eyes narrow slightly, a determined edge to her voice. It reminds Bucky of the way he’d seen her the first time they ever met, staring him down from across the interview table, calculating how she was going to bring down Pierce. “Okay,” she says again. “Do you guys have anyone you can think of, who it might be?” 

Brief, expectant silence. Steve bites his lip. “Well,” he says, “there’s the obvious one. But… but Buck says it isn’t his handwriting. And anyway…”

“He’s in prison,” Carol finishes, “yeah.” A pause—she glances at Maria, then down, then back at Steve and Bucky. “Um. Do you think he might be behind it, somehow, anyway? Get someone to do it for him?” Steve scrubs a hand over his face. “Or just… anyone who might, somehow, be connected to him, in some way, who might’ve done this?”

“Arnim Zola,” Bucky says immediately, voice shaking, “but I can’t see him caring, that much, once Pierce is already in jail. Why take that risk, you know?”

Maria and Carol both nod. “Yeah,” Carol agrees, “he doesn’t give a fuck about anyone. He wouldn’t risk disbarment now that Alex isn’t paying his bills.”

“His kid,” Steve offers, a note of disgust in his voice. “The son, he was a real daddy’s boy.” Bucky rests his head on Steve’s shoulder, face tilted towards the crook of his neck, gripped, suddenly, by a titanic exhaustion. “The wife, maybe.”

“I don’t think her,” Bucky replies softly. “She hates us” —he can’t say _she hates me_ , can’t manage the shame of it right now— “but she hates him, too. She moved to Aspen, or somewhere. She isn’t running errands for him in Brooklyn.”

They’re all four quiet for a moment. Everyone is waiting, breath taut in anticipation, wanting someone else to grapple and find the answer that solvesp it all.

A thought comes to Bucky, vile as a slaughterhouse, tinged in the scent of blood and raw meat. “Brock Rumlow,” he says, and, without realizing it, digs his nails into his palm. “He’d do something like that, and he knows Pierce.” 

“He’s in prison, too,” Steve reminds Bucky gently, wincing. 

Bucky nods absently—he _knows_ , he wants to say, but he’s too tired to form the words, to try and explain that the Rumlow that exists for him is never behind bars. 

“It might not be him,” Maria says finally. She’s been listening sympathetically the whole time, a worried spark in her eyes, and she rests a light hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Do you think it could just be some asshole playing a joke? Wanting to freak you out?”

“But someone who knows where we live,” Bucky whispers. Frustrated, terrified tears push against his throat, making his voice crack, and Steve squeezes him closer.

They’re all quiet. “These days, hackers can find anything, if some asshole has the money,” Maria says, wincing.

Bucky swallows hard.

Steve looks up, suddenly. “What about Loki?”

That makes Bucky look up, too, confused. “But why would he—”

Steve looks, thoughtfully and worriedly, straight at Bucky. “Because he’s pissed we don’t wanna do his fucking movie? Or to try and freak us out into saying ‘oh, god, we need to make sure people hear what’s happening to us here, let’s call him’... I don’t know. He seems like a moron, so.”

“The producer guy?” Carol asks them. Steve and Bucky nod. She frowns, like she might say something, then reconsiders. “Yeah, maybe.”

“You don’t think so,” Bucky says, half-asking. She shrugs.

“I don’t know. It seems a little extreme, but those people are pretty cutthroat.”

Bucky can tell she doesn’t believe it; she’s humoring them, trying not to let them know that she thinks it’s something far more sinister, trying to prevent another gyre of terror from opening up. He bites his lip. 

“Do you guys have a security system?” Carol asks them. Steve nods. “But not cameras, right?” Another nod. “Okay. Listen. Tonight, make sure it’s set” —it’s always set, thanks to Alexander— “and get some rest. If anyone were gonna do anything, I know more self defense than anybody” —a quick smile— “no offense, Rogers.” Steve manages a laugh. “Order cameras tomorrow, and then, if anything happens, you’ll know. I seriously bet it’s some prick who Pierce told was gonna be CEO when hell finally claimed him” —Another small laugh from both of them, easier this time— “who thinks somehow, it’s your fault that he can’t buy his way into the job anymore, and he blew his trust fund on a hacker to live out his sad revenge fantasy. I really, really don’t think it’s anything to worry about, but getting a camera will help just in case.”

(Maria asks her that night, murmured with her hand on Carol’s chest, what she really thinks happened.

“I think,” Carol says, breath hitching, “it’s some fucking creep who used to hurt Bucky, who’s mad that he can’t do it anymore.” And Maria sighs, a heavy, empathetic breath for these two kids who’ve already suffered so, so, so much more than their fair share, and leans closer to her wife.)

Steve and Bucky nod anyway. She says it with such confidence that for a minute, it almost seems plausible and manageable and like it will wrap itself up in a few weeks, if that long.

“Go get some sleep,” Maria says, squeezing Bucky’s arm. “Both of you could use it. We’ll figure things out in the morning, okay?”

And because she says it so soothingly and firmly, they do.

***

For his whole life, Bucky has been an anxious person. When he was younger, it wasn’t the same, but it’s been there since he was little, heart hammering too-fast in his chest at things that it shouldn’t, breath caught unpleasantly, tangled in a colossal web in his lungs, Steve beside him, even when they were just kids who didn’t have the faintest understanding of love or pain or support, telling him it’s okay, calming him down. Bucky kind of hates that about himself, has since he was a teenager and would lie awake, still, brittle air biting at his neck, running through an endless list of _what ifs_ until his head hurt.

The thing, Bucky thinks bitterly, is that he has never, ever been wrong for it. He doesn’t walk around the world terrified that he or Steve or any of their friends are going to wake up with brain cancer or get hit by a drunk driver or go missing suddenly. When Steve rented a motorbike for them in Barcelona, he grinned and climbed onto the back of it without considering how easy an accident would be. He doesn’t throw salt over his shoulder or pay attention to the position of the stars, or whatever, or lie awake imagining the astronomically unlikely things that could, conceivably, happen to the people he loves.

The things that terrify him aren’t ghosts, vague, untouchable fears breathing cold air down his neck that dissipate when he gets too close, nearly impossible to ever present themselves. The things that keep him up at night are the fears that came true. He’d lain awake at sixteen, choking down a panic attack at the thought that his parents might have seen Steve kiss him on the stoop, and then they’d caught them and shipped him off to conversion therapy. He’d been so scared of Alexander and Rumlow and Rollins and the men who had hurt him that terror had weighed down his limbs, replaced the marrow in his bones, and then they’d come back, slipped their cruel, blood-covered hands back into his life in a random alley on his way home and at Tony Stark’s Christmas party and in front of the entire world at a courthouse. He’d known pressing charges would backfire, and Alexander Pierce had walked into his home with a gun and kidnapped him and narrowly missed killing Steve.

So right now, as Bucky kneels in the shower and watches the water coil down the drain, all he thinks is _he’d been right_ , of course he wasn’t safe, of course it wasn’t over. He’s too burnt-out to cry. He just shivers and rocks and bites his cheek until it hurts, and then he makes himself go out to Steve.

Steve is pacing, which means he’s hit his stress threshold. He’s got his arms stretched so his hands are behind his head, muscles taut, crossing the room while Penny lays on her bed and watches him. He stops when he sees Bucky, rubbing his neck and then dropping his arms, giving him a tired, soft smile.

“You okay?” Bucky asks him, even though he knows the answer.

Steve bites his lip. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment, “I’m… yeah. Are you?”

Bucky doesn’t answer; he shifts his weight anxiously, from his heels to the front of his foot, shoving his hands in his pockets. Steve holds his arms open, and Bucky crosses the room and stumbles into them, closing his eyes.

They don’t talk. They don’t know what to say to each other so they just hold on, in the middle of their bedroom, and don’t let go. Steve is warm and solid and steady, and Bucky breathes him in but it doesn’t help the way it usually does, and that makes this entire thing feel a hundred times worse. 

Bucky pulls away and kneels, heavily, on the bed. Without a word, Steve comes behind him and starts working his fingers gently through Bucky’s still slightly damp hair, untangling it and smoothing it and playing with it because he knows it calms him down, and a grief-tinted rush of love hits Bucky. 

_Feels good when you do that,_ Bucky had mumbled sleepily, weeks and weeks ago, lying on the couch with Steve. It was after a nightmare ( _wrist tied so he couldn’t feel the blood there anymore, blindfold slapped over his eyes, pain and pain and pain and sobbing and screaming and shut the fuck up, stupid little slut, SHUT UP BEFORE I DO SOMETHING THAT’LL REALLY MAKE YOU SCREAM_ ) had left him so fragile that he didn’t want to sleep on the bed but he didn’t want to sleep alone, so Steve and he had curled up in the living room, comforters and pillows strewn over the floor the way they had been last year, back when they first found each other and didn’t know how to be together yet but couldn’t be apart anymore, back when Bucky hadn’t realized he had just moved in with Steve for the rest of his life. His head was on Steve’s chest, tucked close against him under their huge weighted blanket. Steve had gotten him almost completely calmed down, and his hands were so soft and so safe, running through his hair absently, twisting it lightly around his fingers. _Makes me feel really safe_.

Since then, Steve has taken it upon himself to learn various hairstyles, and right now he’s braiding it gently, careful, soothing fingers that would never touch without permission, would never _tighten and yank and pull his head back, thrust harder_ , would never scribble _James, miss you sweetheart_ because they’d run out of ways to hurt him—

“Buck,” Steve murmurs, “breathe, baby. It’s okay, you’re okay, I’m right here.”

Bucky wrenches his eyes open. Steve is rubbing his back and Penny is below him, stress-ball in her mouth, holding it out for him. Shakily, Bucky reaches for it and gives her a quick, grateful, pat. He throttles it, taking another breath.

“That’s it, baby, you got it,” Steve says, so gently. Bucky shifts so he can sit between Steve’s legs and lean back against him. Steve kisses him on the cheek, and Penny clambors up to lie on Bucky’s legs.

Bucky swallows hard. “If it’s—if it’s one of the guys who…” Right now, he isn’t brave enough to say it, and Steve doesn’t make him.

Instead, Steve keeps touching his hair, twisting it lightly into a braid, fingers warm and soft on Bucky’s neck. “If that’s what it is, then we’ll catch him, and we’ll get him dealt with,” he says, and he sounds so sure. “I’m gonna take care of you. I’ll always, always take care of you.” His voice catches slightly, growing thick.

The words fill Bucky with such love and safety that for a moment, he relaxes. He squeezes Steve’s knee vaguely, a gentle, grateful movement that says, _I know_.

Bucky pulls a hairband from his wrist and hands it over his shoulder to Steve. “I’m scared,” he whispers. The words are packed; scared doesn’t begin to cover the impossible panic that’s still washing over him, waning and then slamming him again, so much it makes him dizzy.

“I know,” Steve whispers back, “I know. It’s okay to be scared, Buck. Nothing bad is gonna happen to us, baby, not anymore.”

Bucky doesn’t believe it, not really, not the way he wants to so badly it floods him. Steve twists the hair tie into the braid and wraps both arms around Bucky like he’s shielding him.

It leaves Bucky feeling so selfish that shame flushes him, so furious with himself for making Steve comfort him when it’s happening to him, too, when someone came to his house and dropped off that note, but he can’t make himself form words like _it’s okay, we’re gonna be fine_ , words that roll off Steve’s tongue effortlessly and all the time and without a second thought. So instead, he shifts to his side and throws his legs over Steve’s lap, tightening one arm around Steve’s back and one around his neck so he can hold him too, and Steve cradles him close and kisses his shoulder.

But not even that takes away the dread.

***

Bucky tells Jennifer, the next day, dissolving into tears as he does. Steve has come, too, because Henry is out of town and they aren’t meeting again for a week and they both need, right now, to be told it’s going to be okay. They’re on the couch, Penny’s head in Bucky’s lap and Steve’s arm over his shoulders. Jennifer listens until he’s done, and then leans forward with a quick, hard breath.

“Alright,” she says, sweeping her dark hair aside, “okay.” She looks a little startled, but she blinks and then it’s gone, and she’s back to being the voice of reason. “That’s terrifying. I’m so sorry you two had that happen.” 

Nervously, helplessly, they nod.

Jennifer takes another breath. “How’s it making each of you feel, right now?”

Steve lets Bucky go first, so he clears his throat. “Um,” he starts, and his voice quivers, “I just—” And the tears push back against the words, solid in his throat, frustrated and terrified. Steve pulls the arm that’s around his shoulders tighter and squeezes, circling fingertips over his shoulder. “I thought, um, we were on the other side of this. And I’m just… I’m fucking _freaked_ out by it.”

Jennifer nods gently. “Steve?” she says, glancing towards him. “How are you doing?”

Steve grimaces, running a hand through his hair. “I’m, uh. I’m alright. It really… it shook me a little.”

She lets them talk, for a while, about all the reasons it alarmed Steve and made Bucky feel like terror was splintering his bones one by one, lets them get it all out. Bucky feels lightheaded by the time he’s listed every single thing it did to his brain to read those words. She listens, and responds to everything they say with careful, reasonable clarity that she makes sure is validating of everything they say, and eventually Bucky looks up through red-rimmed, stinging eyes.

“What, um…” Bucky begins, and reaches around himself to rub his arm, “who do you think it is?” 

Jennifer pauses, thinking it over. “I think,” she says carefully, “that the most likely scenario is that it’s someone harmless, insensitive idiot trying to startle you guys for a joke or just wanting a reaction. I think…” she pauses, and starts over. “I don’t think it’s anyone who wants to hurt either of you. But even if, absolute worst case scenario, it is that, they won’t do anything. If anyone else comes to your house, you’ll know now, right?” They nod; that morning, Carol helped them order a camera that they can install discreetly enough that no one will see. “So they can’t even get close. I really think it isn’t going to go that far, but it’s good to be prepared.”

They nod again. Bucky feels Steve’s shoulders relax a fraction of an inch. 

“Steve?” Jennifer says gently. “You mind if I talk to Bucky alone for the last few minutes?”

“Of course,” Steve says quickly, and gives Bucky one more squeeze that he returns, grateful and always-astonished with love, before Steve slips out into the hallway.

Jennifer crosses her legs and waits for Bucky to start. Bucky swallows hard, blinking. The air feels thick and hot, almost bloodlike, curdling around him and making him slightly sick. 

“You don’t… you don’t think it’s Pierce?” he asks her finally, and winces. “Or… or any of them?”

Jennifer leans back. “No,” she says, after a brief, fractured second of hesitation. “I don’t think even he’d be that stupid, and I don’t think there’s anyone who he could get to do it for him.” Bucky nods, squeezing his temple.

“What about… what about other guys? Who aren’t in jail?” The thought is heavy as lead in his stomach, burning him, turning his insides to ash and ruins.

She watches him. “Was there anyone you thought of, specifically?”

Bucky wrings his hands a little. “I don’t know. The only, um, name I had was, um, Rollins.” He flinches, just hard enough that he can’t cover it. He’s told her about him. “But… but there are other… there are people who… whose names I don’t even know, who would know me.” Something solid and untouchable inside of him shakes, a hollow, gasping rattle of fear.

“If that’s what it is,” Jennifer says firmly, “then you’re going to find out who if they try something else, and you’re going to get a restraining order immediately. Sound okay?”

Bucky makes a noncommittal gesture with his hands, and realizes he’s rocking a little as he listens. He presses his fingers into his palms to make himself stop. “It scared me,” Bucky whispers, and drags his palm under his eyes.

“I know,” Jennifer answers kindly, “and that’s okay, Bucky. It’s _scary_ to have that reminder of abuse sprung upon you from someone with bad intentions, at your home, no less. But just because you’re scared doesn’t mean you’re going to be hurt. You’re in an extremely safe place, you have security, and in all likelihood, this isn’t a threat to you. It’s just some pathetic joke by someone with too much time on their hands.” She pauses. “Being scared is the most normal reaction in the world, though.”

Bucky takes a gasp of air, lifting his eyes to the ceiling. “I can’t put Steve through this again,” he whispers, the words raspy, harsh in his throat.

Jennifer tilts her head, eyes narrowing with focus. “What do you mean?”

Gesticulating vaguely, frantically, Bucky stares at her. “I mean he’s already… in the last six months, he watched his name get dragged through the mud for a trial that I made happen, and then almost got shot for me. I can’t… I can’t hurt him anymore.”

She lets him finish, like she always does, but then immediately shakes her head. “Bucky, you didn’t do this. You didn’t do any of it.” She leans in. “Steve doesn’t blame you for any of what happened with Pierce, and he doesn’t blame you for any stress that this is causing, because it’s not your fault.”

“I know,” Bucky says, and the helplessness and exhaustion in his voice startles him. “But none of this would be happening if I hadn’t brought it into his life. And last night, um… when we found this, I completely panicked, and it became his job to take care of me, even though that fucking note came to his house, too.”

Jennifer raises her eyebrows. “His house?”

Rubbing his neck, Bucky mumbles, “Our house, I mean. But, you know. I just mean some creep stalking our mailbox our affects him too, and, um, he was the only one who handled it.”

“But it was for you,” she counters easily. “It used language that was meant to cause _you_ distress. Steve doesn’t have years worth of trauma associated with the meaning behind that letter, so of course it got a more extreme reaction from you.” She pauses. “From everything we just talked about in here, I know Steve doesn’t have any resentment because he was comforting you yesterday.”

“I know,” Bucky says again, and shivers. “I just… I don’t want Steve to hurt anymore, because of me.”

“I think,” Jennifer says quietly, “that Steve is probably out there, thinking about how he doesn’t want you to hurt anymore.”

“But he didn’t hurt me,” Bucky answers, frustration starting to clench in the words.

“And you didn’t hurt him,” Jennifer replies calmly. “You aren’t responsible for how the actions of bad people affect Steve, Bucky. All you have control over is the kind of partner you are to him, and you’re a wonderful boyfriend every single day.”

Bucky nods, and closes his eyes. Dark exhaustion is coming over him, lighting him on fire for a split-second and then leaving ashes and remains and smoke, stretching endlessly around him, and beneath it, lingering, hissing, is the fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) love you guys I’m so akdhakdalkdkqd at your comments omg
> 
> Cafelesbian on tumblr


	4. four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for discussions about past abuse in this chapter

_September, 2013_

_“This okay?”_

_Steve murmurs it half against Bucky’s lips at eleven at night as they’re tangled up together, kissing on the couch. Bucky is lying on his chest, head tilted up so their lips can meet. It’s a little faster than they normally go, a warm, comforting, hazy tug between them, a little breathless, the air thicker and heavy with sweetness and something that might be arousal. That’s why Steve is asking._

_“Mhm,” Bucky answers, smiling, and kisses him again. Steve’s hands graze his jaw, pushing back hair, then rest in the middle of his back, not slipping any lower. He’s smiling; Bucky can feel it, and it makes the kiss taste sweeter._

_Heart racing, Bucky pulls away for a moment to shift and sit up. He rests so he’s kind of on Steve’s lap, straddling him a little bit, knees on either side of his waist, but it isn’t sexual exactly, not yet._

_The frustrating thing is that when it’s like this, Bucky feels so completely safe and okay and ready. They haven’t done anything more than kiss, even though it’s been more than half a year since their first one, and even though it’s less and less, sometimes the spark of paranoia that Steve will get sick of doing nothing more than making out and leave will light through Bucky all over again. There’s a colossal dissonance between what Bucky wants and what he can handle. The idea of relearning that closeness with Steve, of reclaiming the thing that had been used to hurt him so badly and redefining the terror and torture and panic that’s become so finely and achingly intertwined with sex, replacing it with murmured words of love and gentle hands and whispers that ask for permission, Bucky wants that so much he can taste it._

_But then they try, and it doesn’t go that way._

_He’s gotten better at telling Steve ‘no,’ mostly because he’s gotten more and more sure that Steve will listen when he says it. It’s not always sexual, either; usually, in fact, it isn’t, moments when Steve leans in to kiss him but he’s having a day where touch like that feels too visceral and terrifying to handle, or when he goes to touch him during a panic attack without realizing that it will throw gasoline on the flames. It used to surprise him, when he’d whisper, “Could you just not touch me, please, just give me a minute,” and Steve would back off right away. It doesn’t so much anymore. He trusts Steve more than anyone, trusts Steve with the parts of him that still haven’t healed, knows if he showed him all of them, he wouldn’t pull away in disgust or cut them open the way other people had, trusts him so simply and completely that when he thinks back to those early, early days after they found each other again, the skittishness and fear and confusion about what Steve would do to him seems like it belonged to someone else entirely._

_Except when he starts to get panicky, he forgets that, sometimes._

_“Could, um, could we try something?” Bucky asks him, a little nervously._

_Steve’s eyes widen slightly; he nods. “‘Course, baby,” he says, and smiles, and Bucky smiles too._

_“Would you sit up?” he asks Steve, and Steve nods and does, kissing him on the cheek as he repositions himself. Bucky is still straddling him, fully on his lap now, the way they used to kiss in twin beds, muffling laughter so their parents wouldn’t hear, and in cheap motel rooms a few times and with no hesitation and no fear and all the trust and love in the world._

_Bucky lets one hand rest against Steve’s face and lays the other arm around his neck, breath hitching a little. Steve winds his arms around Bucky’s middle, hands still on his back, eyes wide and patient. “You sure it’s okay?”_

_“Yeah.” And Bucky kisses him again, with the slow, soft fervor of lovers rediscovering each other in the dark, which he supposes is exactly what they are. Steve kisses him back, they rock a little, unintentionally rhythmic, the always-balanced push and pull of their bodies evening out._

_Bucky’s fingers fumble, slightly, under Steve’s shirt, so he can touch his chest, and his skin is warm and for a moment, it feels like coming home after years and years and years, unlocking your front door to find that the key still works and everything has been preserved and left for you and the person you’ve loved since before you understood love is there, close to you, their skin feeling the same as it always has under your hand._

_Then Steve’s hands graze, very, very slowly and carefully, under his shirt. But for once, touch isn’t the thing that sets him off, not exactly._

_The next move, he knows, is for Steve to tug off the tee shirt he’s wearing. It’s what he used to do when they’d have sex as teenagers, both of them clumsy and impatient and giggling, and it’s what so many guys have done to him that he can’t even remember their names or faces anymore. But if he does that, he’ll see Bucky’s chest, and he can’t, he_ can’t _. Bucky hasn’t let Steve see him naked yet, or even topless, for that matter; too much shame, still, to begin to imagine it, too many eyes who have raked over bare skin and seen an object for him to let Steve do it, too._

_Beyond that, though, what’s making Bucky’s thoughts come to a screeching, violent halt, are the marks. There aren’t many, but they’re there, impossible to overlook, permanent, hideous reminders of what people did to him. The scar, two or three inches long, on his shoulder from when Pierce cut glass into his skin. The burn mark from when Rumlow put a cigarette out on his stomach. Scars from both of their belts on his thighs and back and stomach, and scratches that kept reopening until they seared over forever from others, and areas of slight discoloration from skin that had rubbed too raw to ever heal over completely, and Steve can’t see that, can’t see that now his body has just become a place for men to mark their anger, can’t know how disgusting he is—_

_“Stop, stop, STOP,” Bucky realizes he’s saying, eyes squeezed shut, but Steve has already pulled back. Bucky scrambles off of the couch to his feet, and then sinks immediately to his knees, arms pulled around his stomach, panic flushing him because he’s just yelled at Steve and made him stop even when Bucky was the one who initiated it all, and he feels so fucking stupid and weak and now, surely, he’s pissed Steve off._

_“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, just, um—just give me one minute, and we can—we can go back to it, I just—just one second, I’m really sorry—”_

_“Bucky, baby, hey, it’s okay. Buck, it’s okay, it’s Steve, it’s just me.” Steve’s voice is soft and warm and soothing, but Bucky can’t look up, not yet, not when he’s fucked up that badly. “Baby, I’m not mad,” Steve adds softly, and that coaxes his head up a little. “I promise. You don’t have to be sorry for anything.”_

_The world comes back a little clearer, like the first flickers of sobering up. “I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers, every cell in his body having learned it, and Steve shakes his head._

_“You never have to be sorry for saying no, Buck, okay?”_

_“We can keep—we can keep going—”_

_“Buck…” Steve winces slightly, reaching up to rub his neck, “baby, we don’t have to keep going. We aren’t gonna do that, right now.”_

_Bucky’s chest constricts. He’s mad, or he’s disgusted—_

_“You don’t want to, baby, and that’s okay. I’m never gonna… gonna make you do anything, okay?” Steve’s voice is endlessly soft. “You never, ever need to do something you don’t want, remember?”_

_“I didn’t, um—” Bucky swallows hard, looking down at his hands. His skin looks pale in the thin, filtered in moonlight, and he can see his veins, ghostlike and purple and pumping blood too-fast for him to relax. “Fuck, I’m…” He swallows again, and covers his face._

_Steve slides off the couch and settles next to him, leaving a few inches between them. “Take your time, baby,” he says, nodding gently. “It’s alright. Everything’s alright.”_

_Bucky nods. Penny has woken up by now, and is leaning against him, nuzzling into his chest. He pets her, focuses on that for a few moments, until he can make himself repeat the things Jennifer wants him to remember when panic takes control like this. Steve isn’t mad. He did nothing wrong, he’s allowed to say no, no one is entitled to sex from him, it’s normal that all the distressing memories can scare him into thinking he’s back in a place where he was being abused, but he isn’t._

_He tells himself these things a few times, then looks up. “You aren’t mad?” he whispers, and he hates that he needs to hear Steve say it._

_Steve shakes his head, giving him a gentle ‘everything’s-okay-I’m-right-here-with-you’ smile. “No, baby, never.”_

_“Can we lay down?” Bucky says, voice quivering._

_“Of course, baby.”_

_So he curls up into Steve’s arms on the couch, laying against his chest again, and Steve strokes his hair and pulls a blanket over them. It takes a few minutes to choke the words out, but Bucky makes himself talk anyway._

_“I’m scared that if—that when we—that you’re gonna hate how I look without clothes.” He winces a little, relieved for the dark so Steve can’t see that his cheeks are flushed and that he’s biting his lip._

_Steve’s chest goes still for a moment, his breath catching. “Bucky,” he says, so quietly, voice pained, “no, god, never. I don’t—I think you’re perfect, baby, no matter what, no matter—”_

_“No,” Bucky whispers, his voice growing thick with the beginning of tears, and Steve goes quiet, waiting for him to talk. “No, it isn’t, um—it isn’t just, like, insecurity, or, um.” He takes a long breath. “I have some scars, and stuff.” He doesn’t say from what; Steve already knows. “They’re um. They’re pretty bad.”_

_Quiet, again. The room feels viciously still, like the moment is suspended, a stillness that threatens to split Bucky from the inside if nothing breaks it._

_“Can I… Would you be comfortable letting me see, Buck?” Steve is a little hesitant, his voice lilting with reservation._

_Bucky thinks about it for a moment._

_“It’s okay if not,” Steve goes on, assurance weighing his voice down again, “I promise. I just… I’m not gonna… I’d never think that… I don’t mind, you know? It won’t make me think you aren’t beautiful.”_

_“You’re gonna hate them,” Bucky whispers, and his voice shakes a little, a thin edge to it, one that cuts into him. “I hate them. They’re disgusting.”_

_Steve is very quiet for a moment. He keeps stroking Bucky’s hair, thinking, Bucky knows, about what to say._

_Finally, he says, “Bucky, I hate where they came from, but I’ll never hate anything about you.” The words are so soft that Bucky breathes in and tries to inhale them, tries to let them fill his lungs and heart and bloodstream. “Only if you’re comfortable, baby. But I’m not gonna think anything different about you. Promise.”_

_So Bucky sits up, shifting to sit beside Steve, and nods._

_He shivers a little taking his shirt off; whether it’s the cold or something else escapes him. Steve has one hand on his cheek, still, fingers tracing his jaw, but he’s looking down now, looking at Bucky’s chest and stomach, at parts of him that he hates, with eyes that are so soft and full of love and care and empathy that Bucky’s breath catches._

_Steve reaches, after a few more moments, to touch the scar on his shoulder, traces it gently with his fingertips, then lifts sad, questioning eyes to Bucky’s. “You told me about this one,” Steve says softly, and Bucky nods, closing his eyes. “Oh, Buck.”_

_He hesitates before he touches anything on Bucky’s chest, waiting until Bucky gives him a nod. He touches the burn mark, this awful, blotchy lump of skin over his ribs, excruciatingly lightly, like he’s trying to undo it, like if he’s gentle enough, it will reverse the pain._

_“Rumlow,” Bucky whispers, and the word trembles. “For saying no. For, um, for… For struggling. In the back of his car. He lit a cigarette and…” He closes his eyes, hollowness settling over him. Tears have started, quiet, grieving ones that Steve reaches up to brush away._

_The others are fainter, healed over by time and distance, but he lets Steve trace them anyway, and mumbles explanations when he remembers them. It never hurts, when Steve touches him, not even now._

_“My back and thighs, too,” Bucky mumbles, keeping his eyes closed. “But, um… I don’t want… I’m not ready, yet, to show… um… for you…”_

_And Steve shushes him, and reaches for his hand, weaves their fingers together, and squeezes. “Okay, baby,” he says, very gently. “Whatever you want, Buck.”_

_Bucky swallows hard, blinking back tears. “When you… When you look at me, do you just see the things that happened to me?”_

_Steve lifts his eyes to meet Bucky’s. His gaze is full and steady, and he doesn’t think twice when he answers. “No,” he says simply. “No, never.” A pause. “I look at you, and I see my best friend in the world for as long as I can remember, and I see the person I’ve known I was gonna marry since I was fifteen, and I see the most beautiful person on earth…” Bucky swallows tears, cheeks warm, and Steve kisses his hand. “And I see someone who was so, so, so strong to survive everything he went through, and I see the most important person in my life, who I love more than he’ll ever know. That’s what I see, Bucky. Not what happened to you.”_

_Bucky is shivering again, and crying, but it’s just quiet, relieved, grateful tears. He reaches to cup Steve’s face, because he can’t say ‘I love you thank you thank you’ without crying harder. Steve reaches past him for the blanket and pulls it over his shoulders, so he’s warm again._

_Then, very slowly, so Bucky can stop him if he wants to, Steve leans his head down and kisses his shoulder, kisses the frayed, raised skin that Pierce put there, soft and chaste and airy. “Is this okay?” he asks Bucky, very gently._

_“Yeah,” Bucky replies breathlessly, voice caught again._

_So Steve lowers his head more and kisses his stomach, lips light and warm on Bucky’s skin, almost holy in their purpose and strength and silence. He keeps pausing, to make sure Bucky is still okay, and Bucky keeps nodding and he doesn’t stop until he’s kissed each of them._

_“Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky realizes he’s crying too, tears emphasized by moonlight, his blue eyes turned silver. “I just see you, baby. Not any of that. And you’re so, so beautiful.”_

***

They tell Wanda, Sam, Peggy and Nat a week later. They’re all at Bucky and Steve’s for dinner, sitting comfortably around the coffee table, everyone except Bucky and Steve drinking rosé. Bucky is leaning against Steve, sitting between his legs on the ground, while Steve props his back on a cushion and plays with his hair absently. 

They do this every few weeks, the six of them getting together and making (or, as it usually ends up, ordering) a big dinner together. Tonight, they actually managed to pull together enough organization to cook a full meal (Bucky and Wanda pulled out the pasta recipe, and everyone else kind of teetered uselessly around and made a salad and measured out ingredients). 

Steve is comfortably warm and full, feeling a little wine drunk even though he hasn’t had any. The quiet, even sound of everyone’s voices, punctuated by laughter, the smell of Bucky’s lavender-honey shampoo that he’s come to think of as much a part of _home_ as the floors and ceilings and furniture, their hands, curled together over Bucky’s stomach; all of it slows down the world’s tilt on its axis for a moment, leaves the moment lingering for longer, and Steve wants to preserve it, put it in a painting so it doesn’t become forgotten, turning black-and-white on the edges, the sounds muffled and the scents fading.

He’s calmed down a little bit since the letter. Between Jennifer, Carol, and a few days ago, Henry all telling him, with immovable confidence in their voices, that it was probably nothing to worry about and if it was, they could get it squared away, he’s convinced himself that they’re right. Nothing else concerning has happened, and he’s letting himself slip into the dangerous, comfortable place of believing it was a fluke, and they can move on and eventually, this will cross their memory as nothing more than a faint irritation.

Bucky, though, doesn’t share that line of thinking. He’s been on edge, jumpy and panicky and not sleeping well, tossing restlessly beside Steve or curled up small in one of the armchairs at the window, not sleeping at all. Steve is worried, but more than that, he just hates it. Resentment that anyone could make Bucky feel unsafe corkscrews through him, sharp, ugly pain that clouds his vision and makes him sluggish with worry and anger.

The blunt, ragged slash of worry and anger spears through him now. Sam is talking, telling them about the hospital he’s working part time at, when their gate swings open, a loud, graceless clatter of noise. Steve turns quickly, but Bucky goes still, all his muscles tight with panic. When Steve turns to check on him, his eyes have stretched impossibly wide, all the color gone from his face, mouth pulled into a terrified line.

“Buck,” Steve says, soft and urgent, “baby, it’s okay. It’s okay, it’s no one—” But then the bell rings, a hundred times louder than it usually sounds, and Steve winces and Bucky curls in on himself, trembling, shaking his head over and over.

Everyone has gone quiet, worry settling vaguely over them. Peggy says, very quickly, “I’ve got it,” and goes for the door before Steve can wrench his focus away from Bucky long enough to tell her to be careful.

“Baby,” Steve says, and rubs his back, “everything’s alright, we’re alright.” But there’s a thin string of worry tugging at his chest, the insistent, biting question of who it is, and he stares anxiously after Peggy.

There’s muffled talking, and a moment later she’s back. “Takeaway at the wrong house,” she explains quickly, and sits, again, next to Natasha, taking her hand. 

Bucky lifts his head, calming down; he blinks, and his eyes go clearer, color ebbs back into his cheeks, he lets out a shaky breath. Penny is close, like always, nuzzling into his chest and wagging her tail and pulling focus, and he gulps. 

Wanda is on the floor now, too, arm light on Bucky’s shoulder. “You okay?” she asks him, gently, and Bucky manages a nod. 

He squeezes her hand quickly and then leans, once more, against Steve. “We, um…” Bucky bites his lip, hard. Steve feels him tense up, so he takes his hand and starts tracing his knuckles lightly, one by one, until Bucky starts to relax. “We had… this thing happen, a few days ago. It um…” He bites his lip; Steve can’t see his expression, but he can hear the shame in Bucky’s voice, the humiliation and panic at having gotten so scared. Steve kisses the back of his head, tries to get him to hear _it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s not your fault._

“It was fucking scary,” Steve finishes for him, his voice growing hard. “It’s, um. It wasn’t great.”

The collective breath of the room catches; worried eyes all train on them. Wanda leans in, eyebrows knitted together. 

Steve tells them. Bucky is still leaning against him, and his arms are still linked across his stomach so he can hold him close, and he can feel the tense, guarded hitch of his breath, the uneasiness. When he’s done, the four of them are watching in varying degrees of horror.

“Jesus,” Sam says, his voice low. Everyone is quiet; that, Steve thinks, sums it up. 

“Can’t you call the cops?” Nat says finally. 

Bucky gives her a weary look. “It’s not illegal to leave a note,” he says flatly. He doesn’t add _We’ve met exactly two cops with the right motivations_ , but he’s said it to Steve before and he knows Bucky’s holding it back. He glances at Wanda, and she’s grimacing in a way that suggests she knows, too.

“But what about… Aren’t you guys friends with that detective? Can’t she—”

“We already asked her,” Steve says, running a hand through his hair. “And I mean… It’s just a note. There’s not much to go off of.”

Peggy raps her knuckles against the coffee table. “You don’t think it’s Pierce?”

Steve repeats, for the third time, why they don’t. Everyone is quiet, Bucky most of all; he’s squeezing a little too tightly to Steve’s hand, a small, anxious thing that makes Steve want to sweep him away from this fear, from this world that isn’t good enough for him.

“That,” Wanda says, closing her eyes, “is so fucked up. God, guys. I’m so sorry.”

They don’t say much more; all there is is _I’m sorry_ and _what the fuck_ and neither of those are especially helpful, so they all just wait, in thick, compassionate silence. Steve and Bucky are thoroughly grateful for their friends, for their ability to clock when they don’t want to discuss something and back down.

“Listen.” Peggy drains the end of her glass, frowning. “Next weekend, we’re going to my family’s house upstate. You guys should come. You really, really seem like you could use a few days away.” Nat nods along with her.

Bucky glances up at Steve, shrugging, and Steve shrugs back with a little smile. “Yeah,” Bucky answers, “yeah, I don’t think we’re doing anything next weekend.”

“Perfect,” Nat says, throwing her legs over Peggy’s. “We all in, then? It’s settled?” Everyone nods, and she looks pleased.

“Alright, I gotta go, I’m working early tomorrow.” Wanda gives Bucky a hug, holding on for a little longer than she usually would. He smiles tiredly at her. She’s working full time now, at a dress shop in the East Village, this cute little boutique that Scott’s fiance owned but needed help running since she got pregnant, and he had introduced them. “That’ll be fun, next weekend, I think I can come.”

“Good, babe.” Nat blows her a kiss, which she returns.

“I’ll head out with you,” Sam says to Wanda “Gotta make a phone call.”

“At eleven pm?” Steve says to him, but he ignores it.

A few minutes after, Peggy yawns and stretches and remembers that they’re both working tomorrow, and the two of them get ready to go.

Steve and Nat hover in the doorway for a moment; Peggy is in the bathroom and Bucky has started the dishwasher. Nat doesn’t waste a second before turning to him, gazing intently and purposefully at him until he raises an eyebrow.

“I think,” Natasha says pointedly to Steve, “that you and Buck forget that you’re in the stage of your life that’s supposed to be fun.”

“Do you?” Steve says, his mouth twitching.

“Yep. Your twenties aren’t supposed to be taken up by court cases and creepy notes and worrying, you know.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, well, we don’t think it’s ideal either.”

She smiles tiredly. “Just… Take it easy, okay? I worry about you guys.”

Steve leans against the doorway and crosses his arms. “All things considered, we’re doing alright, I think,” he replies, a little defensive.

Nat shakes her head. “No, that’s not… I know. Believe me, Steve, when I look at you now compared to a year ago, it is just…goddamn baffling, how much happier you seem.” Steve shrugs and smiles, and she touches his arm. “I just mean…” She pauses. “You’re my best friends in the world, you and Bucky. And Sam, obviously, but my point is that you guys have already dealt with so much more than anyone is supposed to, let alone anyone our age. So just… I know things are still really hard, with… just everything, and now—” she glances inside past him, dropping her voice. “—now some perv dropping off zodiac killer notes at your house… look, I just mean, if there’s anything I can ever do to help you guys, just ask, okay?”

Steve smiles at her. Warmth for Natasha floods him, filling the space in their doorway with fondness. “Best friend in the world, huh?”

“Oh, fuck off,” she says lightly, “I’ll deny I ever said it.”

Steve laughs. “Thank you, Nat. Seriously.” He pauses, and she squeezes his arm. “I love you, too.”

She rolls her eyes, and pulls him into a hug, then pats his shoulder. “See you this weekend, then,” she says, with a satisfied smile. Peggy joins her, squeezing Steve’s shoulder as she pushes by.

“Text me when you get home,” Steve calls after her, and laughs at her. “Okay, mom!”

He heads back inside, and Bucky is in the kitchen, gazing down with a blank, troubled look.

“Baby?” Steve says quietly, and he looks up.

“Hey.” Bucky’s has a worried, grim look on his face, a look that means he’s thinking about something that he wants to shake and can’t, so Steve walks over to him and rubs between his shoulders.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says finally, “why I can’t fucking handle _anything_.” His voice hardens, sharp and jagged and aiming for himself, and Steve’s chest tightens.

“Baby, you handle everything. You went through _trauma,_ and now there’s this… this thing, that’s scary, and of course you’re gonna have a reaction.”

Bucky pinches the bridge of his nose. “You went through trauma, too,” he says quietly, “and you don’t have panic attacks every time someone opens the front gate.”

Steve sighs; there’s a weak rattle of pain in his chest. “It’s not the same,” he says gently. 

“It’s fucking embarassing,” Bucky whispers, his voice almost cracking, seconds apart. “I hate that—that they saw—”

“Buck,” Steve says, soft and firm, “Buck, no. Everyone there loves you, baby, everyone understands. It isn’t your fault, okay? There’s nothing embarrassing about it.”

Bucky grimaces, a look that tells Steve he doesn’t believe him but he’s too worn out to argue. Instead, he leans against him, and Steve fits his chin on top of Bucky’s head and hugs him from the side, but it feels like something is changing, the world turning towards something huge and dangerous, slipping past them between the shadows, and it unsettles them.

***

Two days later, Bucky wakes up to breakfast in bed. Steve knocks gently on the door, and Bucky rolls over and then sits up and blinks, surprised. Steve grins.

“Morning, beautiful,” Steve says, and kisses him on the cheek, setting the tray next to them. Bucky smiles up at him, adoring, and Steve rolls back into bed so he’s laying next to him, smiling with his endless warmth that’s reserved for Bucky, and Bucky snuggles close to him.

They haven’t talked about it, but obviously Steve had remembered too, that a year ago today, he pulled Bucky out of that alley and back into his life and reminded him what it was like to feel safe and loved and whole. It seems impossible, that it’s been that long; impossible, that three hundred sixty five days ago, Bucky had woken up nauseous and to a stranger squeezing at his thigh, a guy who hadn’t even looked at him, just pushed his head down and grinded up against his face before he was even awake enough to understand where he was, that he’d been starving and half-alive and couldn’t remember happiness as anything more than a feeble wisp of something from someone else’s life. Impossible, that that had been one year ago, and right now, he’s lying in his bed, in a house that cost four million dollars that he owned, looking over at Steve Rogers, Steve, his partner, his person, Steve, who woke him up with his favorite breakfast and the gentlest kiss on the cheek and calling him _beautiful_.

He leans over, slowly, and kisses Steve, just to make sure he’s really there.

Bucky loves him so much.

“You remembered too, huh?” Bucky says finally, stabbing a strawberry and holding it out to Steve, who plucks it from the fork. Chewing, Steve nods, gives him something that would almost be a smile but that’s just slightly too bittersweet to get there. Bucky returns it. They’re quiet for a beat; _day we reunited after getting forcibly separated for four years and had no idea what to say to each other_ is a strange anniversary to have.

“You know who I think about, a lot?” Steve says after a moment, grinning. Bucky rests his head against his shoulder and hums in expectation. “That junkie who tried to mug me.”

Bucky laughs. “You think about him a lot, huh? Should I be jealous?”

Steve laughs. “Nope. Because without him, you wouldn’t have come out and saved me.”

“I hardly saved you,” Bucky says; his cheeks are inexplicably warm. “That guy would’ve destroyed me, if it came to it.” He winces a little saying it, the unintentional context of it making his breath catch.

“Nah, I would’ve kicked his ass.” Steve replies easily. Bucky snorts, and Steve kisses his shoulder. “Best thing I ever did, walking home that night instead of getting a cab.”

“Best thing I ever did, thinking I was gonna fight off some guy bigger than me for you,” Bucky answers, “I thought you might be a kid, or something. Look at you, you could’ve handled him.” He touches Steve’s bicep, smirking, and Steve winks, and Bucky laughs again and lets himself take it in, the feeling of lying next to Steve in a soft, safe bed, eating breakfast that he made just to show him he loved him, and the joy is so big he feels it, filling the room with the scent of waffles and whipped cream and buzzing on his lips when Steve kisses him.

***

The day after that is worse.

Bucky is feeling bad, guarded and scared and miserable, like everything inside him has begun rotting. It’s one of the really, really bad days, the ones where he can’t get himself to do anything, where he realizes he’s been gazing blankly at one spot for far too long, where any touch feels like a blunt axe into his stomach. It feels like a long time coming, like the accumulation of all the terror and anger that’s been gathering thickly in his stomach since they got that letter, and it’s grown so huge that he has no idea how to stop it, how to even acknowledge it.

He’s in the kitchen, swaying a little on his feet, knuckles white on a now-cold cup of coffee as he looks out the back window. It’s raining, not pouring, just feeble, exhausted winter rain that can’t even be bothered to swell to a full storm. He hears Steve come in—he’s been painting—but he doesn’t turn around for him.

“Okay, baby?” Steve says gently, from behind him. He’s close, and he wraps his arms around Bucky’s middle, but it feels like metal clamping down on his spine. He wants to say _stop, just give me a second_ , but the words feel huge and impossible so he lets it happen anyway.

“Yeah,” Bucky says instead, weakly. “‘M just tired.”

Steve nods, kissing him on the cheek. Bucky doesn’t react, but the metal squeezes a little tighter.

Then he moves his head to kiss his shoulder, the raised, uneven, discolored scar from Pierce. Usually, Bucky keeps it covered, but he’s been a little less careful since he let Steve see his chest and he’s wearing a tank top now, and being touched there is all too much and his stomach sears with panic and he yanks away before he can think about it. Steve steps back, hands raised a little, eyes wide and apologetic.

“Don’t, Steve,” Bucky snaps, “It’s fucking gross. Don’t pretend.”

Steve bites his lip. “Buck,” he says gently, “it isn’t… It isn’t gross—”

Bucky sets the mug down too hard, digs his nails into his palm. “It’s fucking disgusting.” _I’m fucking disgusting_ is heavy behind the words, but he doesn’t say it.

Steve hears it anyway. “No,” he says softly, “no, it isn’t. I swear, baby.”

The words land like breaking glass, like sharp pressure on a bruise. _Not true,_ sneers the part of his brain that’s been quiet for so long, biding its time for when to come back, hissing and cruel. Bucky realizes he’s shaking his head, arms crossed over his chest.

“Baby,” Steve says quietly, “Buck, just talk to me, it’s okay. You can tell me—”

Aggravation cuts through Bucky’s throat. He’s on edge, already, and everything is too much, the air too thick and every movement too sharp and he can’t handle the reminders and he can’t handle Steve lying to him and pretending he isn’t irreparably fucked up when right now, all he feels is _used_ , so much that he can’t even begin to imagine being looked at, and all those nights ago, when Steve kissed him like he wasn’t tattered and cheap, feels like it belonged to someone else. 

He closes his eyes. “I’ve told you,” he hisses, “over and over. Don’t make me do it again.”

Steve takes a step back, a little startled. “Bucky,” he says, carefully, “I’m not… I’m not trying to make you… I thought… I thought… I just wanna help you, Buck.”

“Yeah?” Bucky snaps. “Sorry that I’m not being some delicate fucking flower, crying all over you—”

Steve’s jaw tenses, just a fraction. “When,” he says quietly, “have I ever made you feel that way?”

Bucky closes his eyes. “I’ve already told you fucking everything, I don’t know what you want from me.”

Steve scrubs a hand down his face, a pained, wincing motion. “Baby, there’s things you haven’t said, just… specifics… and I want you to know that you can—”

Something in him snaps, some taut, battered metal that he’s been holding onto, that cuts into him constantly, unceasing. “Specifics?” Bucky snarls. “That’s what you want, huh? Wanna hear about how Brock Rumlow tied me up in his bed and just left me there, blindfolded, ‘till he came back and fucked me again? Wanna hear about how when Pierce gave me the thing that you just called _not gross_ , he made me suck him off and said to me that _naughty little sluts need pain to learn_?” Bucky flinches hard; the words taste poisonous in his mouth, so nauseating that he wants to scrape it clean, but he swallows it anyway. “Jesus Christ, Steve. There’s a reason I haven’t told you fucking specifics.”

Steve’s eyes have gone wide and sad and he flinches at the words, this look of excruciating sorrow in his eyes, and Bucky can’t take it. He can’t do it right now, figure out what to say and what Steve wants and how to be a normal fucking person, so he hisses, “I’m going for a walk,” and a moment later, he’s out, jacket pulled over the scar, Penny with him, and he finds himself in the park.

It’s cold and sharp out, cutting, uncomfortable weather that presses heavily against his lungs, but at least the park is empty. Bucky grinds his palms into his eyes, trying to get a breath. He just spoke that way, screamed at Steve, Steve who has done nothing but hold his hand and love him through the grueling, exhausting process of recovering, who was just trying to be gentle and understanding, who never deserved to be spoken to like that, least of all by Bucky when he was just trying to be decent and loving and good. Guilt claws its way through him, opening an ache in his chest, the desperate, vile urge to take it all back biting at him but he can’t, he can’t, he already said it to Steve and when he gets home, Steve is going to be so angry. He’s sobbing, he realizes vaguely, stifling it with one hand, the other one on Penny, who’s licking him to try and calm him down, but he can’t, he can’t because panic is crashing over him too fast to manage, so he just waits, eyes squeezed shut.

He thinks about calling Jennifer, but he doesn’t want to bother her and there’s not a chance he could mumble a coherent explanation, and he realizes a moment later that his phone is dead, and even after that, he realizes he’s been out for some time, because his hair is completely damp and he’s shivering.

He should go home. However mad Steve is, he’ll be madder if Bucky stays gone longer, and he finds himself at their front door even though he doesn’t remember getting there.

Bucky’s hands are shaking when he lets himself in. He turns to the living room, and Steve must have been sitting because he’s jumped to his feet, eyes wide. Bucky bites his lip and lowers his head, guilt flushing him, turning over in his chest.

“Buck.” Steve’s voice shakes with relief. Bucky can’t make himself look up.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpers, and before he knows it his knees buckle and he’s hit the ground, face in his hands. Steve kneels beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder, and before he can say anything Bucky is stammering, tripping on the words, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know I fucked up, I know you’re mad, I’m sorry, could you just—just please not hit me, I won’t do it again, I’m—” he breaks off, forcing himself to look up. Steve’s eyes are huge, his face blank and confused, and Bucky stutters, “I know—I know—I know that I deserve it, I just—just _please_ —”

And then Steve’s face darkens, grows enraged, and Bucky pulls far away from him, back pressed against the door, shaking. He presses his face into his hands and waits, terror coursing through him, for Steve to yank his hands away and drag his hair back and strike him, because he _knows_ he deserves it, for yelling at him that way, for treating the person who’s given him nothing but love and care like that, but he _doesn’t want it_ , doesn’t want to hurt anymore—

“Bucky.” The word comes out so softly, like it tastes sweet in Steve’s mouth. “Bucky, baby. I’m not mad. I’m not—I’m not—I’m not gonna _hit_ you, Buck.”

Bucky’s shoulders relax a fraction, but he still doesn’t look up. “Thank—thank you, I’m—I’m sorry—”

“No, baby, you don’t have to be sorry. I’m not mad, Buck, not mad, I _promise_.” Steve sounds wounded. “Buck, do you know where you are right now? Do you know—do you know who I am?”

Bucky winces and nods. “St—Steve,” he says, very quietly. 

Steve takes a hard breath. “Yeah, that’s right, Buck. It’s just me. And—and I’m never, ever, ever gonna hit you, okay? And you— _fuck_ —” The word is small, barely a breath, “you never, ever deserve to be hurt. And I’m never going to hurt you. You’re okay, Buck, yeah? You’re safe.”

Safe, safe, _safe. It’s Steve,_ Bucky manages to think, _Steve isn’t gonna hurt you, it’s just paranoia, it’s just distress, it’s trauma, you’re okay._

“I’m sorry,” he says again, softly. Steve shakes his head, shushing him.

“Can I put my arms around you, baby?” Steve asks him, softly.

Bucky swallows. “Can, um— fuck, I’m sorry, can you just… just wait, please? If that’s—if that’s okay—”

“It’s always okay, baby,” Steve tells him softly. “I won’t touch you, I’m never gonna touch you when you don’t want.”

Bucky nods, and keeps breathing, keeps rubbing Penny, and the nerves in his body that are electrified start to dim.

 _Steve,_ Bucky thinks again, some of the static in his head dulling, _is never going to hurt me. I’m not with those people anymore. I don’t deserve pain._

Carefully, nervously, he reaches for Steve, letting his arms fall around his neck, and Steve holds him, gentle and cautious, stroking Bucky’s hair. Bucky is shivering, he realizes, and he presses close to Steve for the warmth. He feels so idiotic, entirely too stupid for the whole thing, for snapping like that and then for panicking and for making Steve feel guilty. His mind clouds over with hollow exhaustion.

“You wanna take a bath, baby?” Steve asks him softly, pulling him back. “You’re cold.”

Bucky nods, eyes closed. “Will you, um, would you stay with me?” He hates himself, hates how needy he sounds, and he winces at first— _fucking idiot why would he stay with you when you just did that to him_ —but Steve kisses the top of his hair and the panic wanes a little.

“Mhm.” Even in his half-delirious coming down from panic, Bucky doesn’t miss the relief in Steve’s voice. “Yeah, of course, my love. Want me to wash your hair?”

Bucky nods, and then he’s crying again, soft and sudden, feeling colossally undeserving of this gentleness and tenderness and of Steve, of being forgiven and loved. But Steve helps him upstairs, and kisses his forehead and keeps murmuring to him, and eventually, Bucky’s heartbeat starts to slow, the throbbing in his head starts to dull.

Bucky lays between his legs, close against his chest. Steve holds him, not talking or moving for a little while, and thinks back a few weeks to a therapy session he’d had.

 _Sometimes_ , Steve said to Henry, _I get afraid that I’m reminding Bucky of them._

And Henry leaned in. _What makes you think that?_

 _When he talks to me about the stuff that happened to him, and I get mad for him,_ Steve answered, _sometimes he reacts like… like I’m mad at him. And I don’t know how… it’s gotten better, a lot better since we first got together, but it’s still… anger is such a— so many people have used it to hurt him. It stresses me out that he’d ever think I was going to._

 _You’re allowed to be angry, Steve,_ Henry had said, _just because you’re feeling it doesn’t make it the same. Feeling protective and angry about what he went through is nothing like what Bucky’s abusers did to him._

 _I know that_ , Steve answered, running a hand through his hair, _But I don’t think he does, always. And I don’t know how to make him know that when I get angry around this stuff, it’s never, ever towards him._

 _You’re going to feel angry about what they did to Bucky_ , Henry answered, _there’s no way around that. He’s working hard to unlearn the messages that it was his fault, and that anyone, not just you, is going to somehow blame him. He was abused really badly, and that affects his perception of people, especially of anger. That doesn’t mean you’re the same as them, or you’re affecting him that way. You absolutely aren’t. But talking to him about this, if he reacts to anger in a way that worries you, being open about the way both of you are feeling will help you both get to a place where you feel comfortable expressing how you’re feeling._ He paused. _Would it help to go over it and plan some things you can say, if you start worrying you’re scaring him unintentionally?_

“I’m sorry,” Bucky mumbles, finally, shaking him out of it. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. I don’t—I didn’t mean any of it. I just… I just felt really, really bad today. I’m sorry.”

Steve swallows, thumbing along his hand. His nails are painted blue right now, almost turquoise, the color of Bucky’s eyes, sometimes, but not now. Right now they’re more grey. “It’s okay, Buck,” he says softly, “It’s okay. I’m sorry I pushed it on you. It wasn’t fair.”

Bucky lays his head on Steve’s chest, eyes closed. Relieved at the touch, Steve combs his fingers through his hair, untangling it, kissing his forehead once.

 _I know I fucked up, I know you’re mad, I’m sorry, could you just please not hit me, I won’t do it again, I know I deserve it_. Steve’s head hurts, a ragged, enraged burst of pain. Bucky hasn’t talked like that in so long, has been doing so good, and Steve feels so viciously stupid for thinking he’d gotten over it, he’d forgotten the messages that he’d learned, pressed into him from the inside by all those monsters who knew nothing but pain.

Steve doesn’t realize he’s crying until Bucky lifts a hand and touches his face. “Steve?” he says, very softly. “What is it?”

Steve takes a breath. “I’m just… I’m sorry, baby, I’m so fucking sorry, I didn’t mean to—god—I didn’t wanna ever make you feel like… like I’m gonna _hurt_ you.”

Bucky sighs, breath quivering. “It isn’t _you_ ,” he mumbles. “You know that, right? I didn’t—it was ‘cause I’m fucked up, not ‘cause you did anything wrong. Like… I know, right now, and almost all the time that… that you aren’t gonna hurt me. I know that. I trust you—I trust you so, so much.” He pauses, biting his lip. When he lifts his eyes to Steve, they’re glazed again, like he’s still a little out of it. “Just… when I get bad like that, um, when I get scared, it’s just… it’s just so hard to think clearly, you know?”

Steve swallows and nods. “What can I do for you, Buck?” he asks softly. “When you’re having a hard time remembering. How can I make you feel safe?”

“You do make me feel safe,” Bucky mumbles in protest. He’s exhausted, still laying against Steve’s chest, and Steve sighs.

“But baby,” he says gently, “baby, today you thought I was gonna hit you.” He winces. 

Bucky is quiet for a few moments. “Just the way you did it, today,” he whispers. “When you, um, didn’t touch me, and told me you weren’t mad. That helped, a lot.”

“Okay,” Steve whispers, and kisses his forehead again. Then he murmurs, “Baby, have there been other times? That you… that you thought I was gonna hurt you, or—or punish you?” 

Bucky hesitates; anxiety flits over his face. “It isn’t like that much anymore. I don’t, um—it used to happen, way back before we were a couple again, but, um, you usually… when it’s happened, you usually make it go away fast.” He rests his head on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve knows it’s so he doesn’t have to see his face.

 _I’m sorry_ , Steve wants to say again, _I’m so sorry that you didn’t feel safe and protected, today. I’m so, so sorry that all those fucking people hurt you like that, made you think you deserved to be hit for speaking the wrong way. _But it isn’t what Bucky needs to hear right now.__

__Instead, he says, gently, “Buck? Can you, um, can you do something for me?” A hum from Bucky. “Can you promise me that next time that happens, you let me know right away?”_ _

__Bucky doesn’t answer right away; his chest stills, breath caught. “Okay,” he says softly, “yeah. Can I just, um—what do you want me to say?”_ _

__“Whatever… whatever you like, Buck, if you just say ‘you’re scaring me right now,’ or… or what you said today, just telling me, um, you think I’m gonna hurt you… I never, ever, ever want you to be scared of me, okay?”_ _

__Bucky is very, very quiet for a moment. “Do you think,” he finally says timidly, “that, um. We could maybe come up with a… a word, or something? ‘Cause, um, ‘cause usually when… when it happens, I’m too… I’m really in my head, and it’s hard for me to—to say no, and stuff, but if… can I just say something, so you know?”_ _

__A jolt of pride and relief and love shoots through Steve, easing some of the aching. “Yeah, baby. Of course. We can totally do that.”_ _

__“Maybe, um, I’ll just say red?” Red, the color of blood and anger and panic and _stop_ , and the color of what it felt like when people didn’t listen to it._ _

__“Yeah, baby, sounds good.” Steve pauses. “I’m so proud of you, Buck. I love you so much.”_ _

__Bucky swallows. Tears burn behind his eyes again, quiet ones, grateful ones, ones that tell him he knows he doesn’t deserve this. But Steve works his fingers through his hair so lightly, and tells him he’s proud, and he loves him, and after they’re dry, lifts him up like he weighs nothing and holds him against his chest and carries him down to the couch to lie with him, and as Bucky drifts off he knows, completely, that he’s safe._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry to not do it last sunday i'm on vacation in another timezone and the passage of time is not applying here lmao
> 
> cafelesbian on tumblr x see you possibly before next sunday but definitely by then


	5. five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some warnings for very very mild recreational drug use in this chapter❤️

Peggy’s upstate house is less of a house and more of a sprawling, obscene mansion. Her family is rich, somewhere between Steve-rich and Tony Stark-rich, rich enough that she went to private school all her life and graduated college without a cent to pay in loans, rich enough that, when she’d first started dating Nat, Stev was inclined not to like her until Nat snapped, “You work for the fifth richest man in America, Steve,” and he let the cognitive dissonance go.

Steve and Bucky give Sam and Wanda a ride up. Neither of them have a car yet, on account of living in New York on salaries that barely cover their rents, so they meet at Steve and Bucky’s place and leave from there. Steve is driving, and Bucky is in the passenger seat, and Wanda, Sam, and Penny are all in the back. Sam and Wanda are eating strawberries out of the same tupperware, their shoulders touching, and Bucky is trying to figure out when they became good enough friends to be sitting that close. Steve reaches over and holds his hand out, and Bucky takes it and squeezes, and they share a smile.

They talked over the fight and the aftermath in therapy together a few days ago. Jennifer agreed that having a way to quickly, easily acknowledge when it was happening was important. She talked, privately to Bucky, about the things he could tell himself when that paranoia hit that Steve would be angry, that he could always call her if he needed to hear it from someone else. 

Bucky feels a little bit better about the whole thing.

They get there in late afternoon, and the day is good. It’s cold, but not freezing, so they toss a frisbee in the yard and then head inside and cook dinner, Amy Winehouse in the background because they let Peggy choose the music, and after dinner they start a fire and sit in the living room laughing.

It’s beautiful, being here, with these people he loves so much, with Steve, in his arms and his life, and for a moment, Bucky watches them from the outside, peaceful and incandescent.

“Steve, Buck, Sam,” Nat says eventually, and grins. “Do you remember Tom, from high school?”

“The stoner,” Sam replies, and snorts. “Had a big crush on you.”

Nat winks. “And who could blame him. But. I did run into him recently, and it turns out he’s still _in the market_ , shall we say.”

It takes Bucky a moment, but then he sits up. “Natasha,” he says, “you did not buy weed from him.”

She smirks. “I thought,” she says, sounding satisfied, “we could all use some. I only got a little.” Peggy snorts and rolls her eyes; clearly, she had known already.

“Gonna get us all fucking fired,” Sam says, shaking his head, but he’s grinning. Wanda laughs too.

“Not me,” Steve says helpfully, and Nat rolls her eyes.

“Then you can just pay for us to do everything for the rest of our lives, Rogers,” she retorts. “So c’mon, everyone down?” And apparently, everyone is.

Steve gives his hand a squeeze— _this okay with you?_ Bucky squeezes back and smiles to say yes, and Steve pulls an arm tight around him. Bucky loves him.

It’s cold; everyone has dragged blankets and coats out to wrap around themselves. Steve and Bucky are sharing one, Bucky leaning against his chest, his arms around Bucky’s front, and Nat and Peggy are sitting close and have one draped around their shoulders. The air is cold and still, and every breath feels sharp and clean, inhaling the unclouded view of the stars and the smell of pine trees and the sound of bullfrogs, somewhere close but untouchable.

Nat gets the blunts rolled; Bucky is dragged, sharply, several years back, sitting on Steve’s roof with the two of them and Sam, all of them coughing and glancing, paranoid, at one another— _is this working? I don’t think… oh my GOD, we’re up high right now_ —and it makes him smile a little. She does three, and passes them around, lighting each one quickly. Bucky hasn’t smoked in years; he and Wanda did, once, with Scott on their fire escape, but he knew all about gateway drugs and the last thing he needed was to add _drug addict_ to crippled, homeless hooker, so he tended to stay away. Right now, though, he doesn’t mind. 

He takes a short hit first, coughing a little. Steve laughs at him, and he elbows him in the stomach when he passes it back.

He starts to feel it a few minutes later, a slant of the world, comfortably hazy and slightly off, not enough for him to lose control but enough for him to have to focus extra hard to pay attention. Steve is still holding him from behind, and it feels good, it feels so safe, and when he leans down and presses a kiss to Bucky’s cheek, Bucky giggles and kisses him back.

Nat is talking, but the noise is a little muffled. Bucky is warm because Steve is warm and he’s close to him, and he looks up at him and grins, delirious, and adoration flushes Steve’s face when he smiles back.

Adoration towards _Bucky_ , that turns his insides to honey, that he’ll never get used to. He snuggles close. He realizes, a moment later, she’s talking about her internship at the DA in Manhattan, filing things for defense lawyers and preparing for law school and such.

“Yeah,” Nat says, a little flippantly, “I don’t know. It’s a bit depressing, working on these cases. All these people who just got into these terrible situations, and now their lives are ruined. Had a guy this week who was just in a fight, and he accidentally hit too hard and the guy died, and now he’s facing fifty years.” She pauses, taking a drag, then passes it back to Peggy. “It’s not even the murder cases that get me, these days. They’re all kinda… I don’t know… explainable. It’s the assault and child neglect and rape ones that make me feel gross for working to like, help the people.”

“It’s your job,” Wanda offers, “I mean, right to an attorney and all.”

“Yeah.” She pauses. “I hope that while en I get an actual career, I can stick with the drug dealers and murderers, though. I way prefer them to the people who hurt their wives or kids or whatever.”

Everyone is quiet, letting the conversation simmer and fade. Steve takes another hit and passes it to Bucky, who takes it from him and tilts his head back against his shoulder to smile up at him.

“You think you could ever do that, if it came down to it?” Sam asks suddenly; his voice is thick and tired—he’s a lightweight, too. “Would you kill someone?”

Bucky says, quietly, “I almost did.”

Everyone besides Steve turns to him, but he’s still feeling buzzed enough that it doesn’t make him flinch. He’s never talked about this, not to Jennifer, not even to Steve, since he’d turned to Bucky and whispered, with utter certainty, _I’ll say it was self defense._

“Pierce,” he explains, the name making him wince. Steve squeezes him closer.

“That was self defense, though,” Wanda points out fiercely. Bucky shakes his head. He’s strangely calm, the mixture of intoxication and chill and Steve’s safe, safe arms around him turning the usual roaring in his head to a dull buzz.

“Afterwards, when he… I had the gun, and he was already down. And I almost, uh, finished the job.”

In the distance, a dog barks.

Nat says, softly, “Why didn’t you?”

Behind him, Steve has shifted his chin off of Bucky’s shoulder so he can kiss the back of his neck. Bucky is trembling a little, and he lays his hand over Steve’s.

“I don’t know, totally,” Bucky replies. “It wasn’t… I wasn’t like, forgiving him. Not at all.” His voice hardens. “I didn’t want him in my life that much more, you know? And” —Bucky takes a breath. Wanda is playing with the lighter but watching him, the flame sending orange fanning out and vanishing every half a second. There’s a stillness in the air, like even the chill has stopped— “I didn’t want it to end like that for him. I wanted him to suffer.” The words are ugly, and he means all of them.

“Yeah.” Sam breaks the brief silence. “That would’ve been too painless for him.” Woven into the words is protectiveness, almost what he hears from Steve every single day, and Bucky gives him as much of a smile as he can manage.

“I used to think about it,” Wanda says, after a few pregnant beats. Her voice is neutral, almost careless, eyes flashing with something hard. “I don’t know if I would’ve done it. But I thought about it with different people.” She pauses; Sam leans a little closer to her. “Guys would say things to me, at my old job, seriously fucked up stuff. And at first, it just shocked me and freaked me the fuck out, but after a little while, it just made me fucking furious. So some drunk asshole would be talking to me, or, you know, groping me, and I’d look at him and think about how easily I could do it. Sometimes I had a knife on me, ‘cause I used to carry one. I don’t know if I would’ve done it, but god, it felt good to think about.” She pauses. “Pass me that, Buck?” He realizes he’s holding the joint, and he hands it to her. She takes a hit and grimaces, a little sad, but mostly in acceptance.

Bucky knows she’s leaving things out, knows that men have done more to her then say things, and even though it isn’t new, his chest aches. He used to think that way, too, bent over some guy’s table, diminished to something less than human, touched like he existed purely for them, and he’d take it and bite his lip and imagine fighting back. It was the same for Wanda; the fantasy was all they had, some _I Spit on Your Grave_ esque daydream about being able to hurt in return. 

He gives her a small, sad smile that tells her _I know, I love you_ , and she returns it.

“That,” Peggy announces, “is fucked. They would’ve deserved it, if you had.”

Wanda smiles and flicks ash away. “Yeah, well. Anyway, I’m glad I never did.” The finality of the words signals she’s done discussing it, and no one forces her. 

“Steve almost killed a guy on our soccer team in high school for being gross to him and Bucky,” Sam announces, and the lightness is back, and relief runs through Bucky. He hums in agreement.

“I did not almost kill him,” Steve protests, and rolls his eyes.

“Steve,” Bucky adds, “has almost killed a lot of people for me.”

Everyone snorts.

“And I’d almost kill a lot more, baby,” Steve answers. Nat fake gags, and Bucky flips her off.

They stay there for a while more, watching the stars glittering through bleary, stoned eyes, until everyone is too tired to stay up anymore and Bucky becomes aware he’s freezing.

Penny was sleeping inside by the fire, and when they come in she trots upstairs with him and Steve and curls up on their bed. “You good?” Steve yawns.

Bucky hugs him, leaning into his chest, smiling vaguely. “Yep. You?”

“Mhm.” They sway a little, tightening their arms around each other, almost dancing. Bucky presses his face into Steve’s neck, pecks a kiss to his skin, and Steve mumbles, “I love you.”

“I love you, punk,” Bucky murmurs back, and kisses his neck, chaste and quick. “‘m gonna shower.”

“‘Kay, baby.” 

So he does, and when he comes out Steve is wrestling with Penny on the bed. He watches them, love filling him, overflowing him, until Steve sits up and laughs.

“I’m gonna grab some water, you want anything?”

“Nope.” Steve smiles at him, with so much softness Bucky can almost feel it soothing him, healing him, and he grins back and disappears into the hallway.

The house is laid out so the top floor has a hallway that stretches the perimeter house, looking down into the living room and part of the kitchen. Bucky heads for the stairs, rubbing his eyes, mostly sober but not completely, and when he glances into the kitchen there’s a flash of motion and some giggling and he thinks, at first, Nat and Peggy are there, and he’s about to call out to them and tell them to get a room but he realizes, startled, that it’s Wanda and _Sam_. She’s got a hand on his chest and an arm around his neck and he’s holding her by the waist and they’re both laughing, and then a moment later she surges in and kisses him, long and quiet and easy.

Bucky blinks, shakes his head, thinks at first that he must be much higher than he realized. His vision flickers a little but it doesn’t go away, they’re absolutely still there, but now they’re holding hands and he twirls her under his arm and then kisses her again.

Bucky stares, too stunned to even form a reaction. Then, silently, he inches back to his and Steve’s room.

“ _Steve!_ ” he hisses from the doorway, and snaps his fingers. Steve looks up from his phone, startled. “C’mere, but be quiet.”

__“Everything okay?” He’s already up, hand light on Bucky’s waist, so Bucky nods in reassurance and squeezes both his hands._ _

__“Yeah, yeah, you gotta see this though.” And he pulls Steve quietly down the hallway and points._ _

__They’re still there, but now Wanda is scooping them ice cream and Sam has his arms around her from behind. Bucky watches Steve witness this, confused, and then she turns and kisses him on the cheek and Steve’s mouth falls open. Bucky nods, lips pursed, trying to stifle astonished laughter._ _

__Steve turns back to him, finally, and presses a hand over his mouth. Then he jerks his head back into the hallway and they disappear around the corner again._ _

__“What the _hell_?” Steve whispers, leaning back against the wall and holding his forehead. “They… but… what…”_ _

__“Did you know?” Bucky asks him, shaking his head._ _

__“No, Sam didn’t say a _thing_ to me—Wanda didn’t tell you?”_ _

__“No.” Bucky covers his mouth again, stunned. “How long, do you think?”_ _

__“You don’t… you think that’s been going on a while?” Steve says, and keeps blinking._ _

__“Did you see them? That wasn’t a hookup…” Steve nods in agreement. “Oh, my god,” Bucky says suddenly, remembering. “The other night, when they left together…”_ _

__“Holy shit,” Steve says, and laughs again, incredulous. “Those assholes, they’ve been keeping it from us…” But there’s no malice in the words._ _

__Bucky is laughing again, doubling over with it, and it makes Steve laugh too, gasping for breath, hysterical and giddy and still a little stoned, and then Bucky surges in and kisses him, still laughing so the vibration thrums through Steve’s mouth and throat and heart. He touches Steve’s cheek, almost shy, like their first one, and with his other hand his fingers hook on the neckline of Steve’s shirt. Steve places his hands light on Bucky’s hips to steady him, pausing and waiting for a nod before he does so, and pulls him close. Bucky smiles; Steve feels it, and then Bucky lets out a small, content breath, pushing closer to Steve so their bodies are flush against each other._ _

__“Is this alright?” Steve murmurs, double checking._ _

__“Mhm,” Bucky answers, “I love you.”_ _

__“I love you, too,” Steve tells him, and the words don’t even scratch the surface of the endless, impossible adoration that fills him up, but he wants Bucky to know anyway. His lips are warm, and Steve breaks the kiss to peck his cheeks, flushed and lovely, and Bucky looks so happy, the only way he should ever look._ _

__They kiss like this for a little longer, leaning against the wall in the hallway, dark enough that they’re relying mostly on movement and their knowledge of each other’s skin and muscles and souls, breathless and heavy, until it becomes lethargic and slow and Bucky murmurs “Do you wanna lie down?” Steve nods, but they don’t break apart yet._ _

__“Want me to carry you, your majesty?” he says, smirking, and Bucky laughs and nods, so Steve hoists him up, his legs around Steve’s waist, and grins down at him as Steve stumbles to the bedroom._ _

__He’s careful, setting Bucky down, laying him a little on the bed, but he just smiles, sleepy and content, and Steve swears the love that surges through him must stop the turn of the earth for a moment. He slips into bed next to him, pulling Bucky close, Bucky nuzzling into his neck and dotting a kiss there._ _

__Steve shuts his eyes as Bucky glances at his phone for a moment. He’s exhausted, sleep already coming over him, but then, from far away, there’s a gasp, this horrible, strangled, frightened sound that drags him back to the world and he sits up._ _

__“Buck?” he says, blinking, so disoriented that he thinks, at first, Bucky’s having a nightmare, but then he realizes that no time has passed since they laid down. Bucky is sitting up, still staring at his phone, but he’s holding it with both hands and rocking back and forth, and panic jolts through Steve. “Baby, what is it?”_ _

__Bucky doesn’t even hear him. He drops the phone and buries his face in his hands, and Steve feels suddenly stone-cold sober, shaking off exhaustion and the end of the buzz to stare at him. Bucky’s phone is still on, a small, pale spot of light on the bed, and carefully, Steve takes it._ _

__Three texts, from an unsaved number that’s never messaged him before. Steve reads them, and sickness rises in him and spills over, a shriek of panic and anger picking up, whirring and screeching to life in the back of his head._ _

_miss you, baby. Get my letter?_

And then, _you and rogers look cute together. you as good a whore for him as you were for me?_

And then _just because you dress pretty and have a nice house now doesnt make you less of a slut, you know. rmr what you used to do for twenty bucks? money cant buy that away, sweetheart_

Without thinking, Steve pounds the call key. _I’m going to fucking destroy them_ , he thinks, murderous, _I’m going to find them and make them pay_. Sam was right; he’s almost killed for Bucky a dozen times and now he’s going to, because how dare they, how fucking dare someone do this to him, scare him and demean him and taunt him because they’ve lost control now, because they can’t abuse him and objectify him anymore. 

__He doesn’t expect anyone to answer, so when there’s a click and a short, hard breath, Steve’s vision goes white. No _hello?_ , no anything._ _

__“Who the fuck is this?” Steve growls._ _

__Some static, and the line goes dead._ _

__Steve manages, incredibly, to keep himself from throwing the phone down or putting his fist through the wall or calling again and telling the motherfucker on the other end that he’s going to slit his throat. He doesn’t do it because his eyes fall on Bucky; Bucky, who’s curled into himself, head in his lap, arms around the base of his skull, terrified; Bucky, who doesn’t need the person he’s supposed to be able to trust to burst into eruptive anger and scare him that much more. Steve takes a breath, and the air tastes toxic._ _

“Hey, baby” — _miss you, baby_ ; Steve kicks himself— “Bucky, it’s okay. Look at me, my love, take a breath, okay? Can you do that, Buck?” Bucky gasps, dry and ragged. “In and out, love, take it slow, it’s alright.” Steve doesn’t touch him yet, but Penny nuzzles close, licking him, pawing gently. Bucky takes another breath, trembling, half a sob. “Everything’s alright, everything’s gonna be alright, I’m here with you, you’re doing so good, Buck, gonna keep you safe, I promise.” But Steve doesn’t know, he doesn’t know that at all because some pervert has Bucky’s number and is saying those things, calling him the things that all the people who hurt him called him to blame him. 

__Bucky’s breathing slips, slowly, from hyperventilating to fast, panicky breaths to labored, terrified breathing, but he’s slowing down. He’s whimpering a little, still not all here, and when he gets his breathing slow and even enough that he isn’t dry heaving, he just sobs. Bucky cries and cries, these soft, muffled gasps that are so full of terror that it surprises Steve he doesn’t coil in on himself and not return. Steve reaches, slowly, for him; he touches his hand, very lightly, and when Bucky doesn’t shrink back he takes it, squeezes gently._ _

__“Can I hug you?” Steve asks softly. A choked, still moment, and then Bucky nods, and collapses against Steve’s chest when he moves in. Steve cradles him, rocking them both, one hand cupping the back of his head, the other on his back._ _

__“It’s okay,” Steve whispers, “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”_ _

__Wind tears against the window, wild and insistent and suddenly sounding like a cry of surrender. Steve holds Bucky close and Bucky holds him back, weakly, at first, and then clinging. He’s pitched forward in Steve’s arms so their bodies are adjacent, so he’s almost leaning forward on Steve’s lap, his weight pressed into his forearm, and if Steve pulled it away he would fall but he doesn’t, he never, ever, does, just keeps him balanced and strokes his hair. Steve stares at Bucky’s phone. It’s dark, now, nothing else, no more messages, no calls. Someone, somewhere, had typed that out, brutal, hideous words, and sent them knowing what it would do, the someone who had picked up the phone and taken a breath and then, upon realizing they weren’t talking to Bucky, hung up. Steve realizes his eyes are burning with tears, but it’s just anger, lividity that carves everything out of him and leaves him hollow and disgusted._ _

__They stay like that for five, ten, fifteen minutes, until Bucky lifts his head and crosses his arms over his chest. He looks young, suddenly, small in the clothes he’s wearing, cheeks hollow and pale, not unlike the first night Steve had seen him in four years. He opens his mouth, for a moment, eyes cast down, then closes it and buries his face in his hands again._ _

__“Buck,” Steve says, as firmly as he can with the tremor that’s pushing through all of him, winding its way to his voice. Bucky looks up, his face shrouded in misery. Steve reaches his hand out again, and Bucky takes it. “It’s alright, baby. Everything’s gonna be fine, I promise. We’re gonna figure all of this out.”_ _

__Bucky swallows, and takes a shuddery breath. “I, um—how—I don’t get—who—” He’s so scared, still trying to get his balance back, and he takes the comforter in his other hand and squeezes. Lethargic, belated panic rolls over Steve._ _

__“We gotta tell Carol,” Steve says suddenly, the only plan he can muster.. “She can help, I bet she can… track it or something. Or—or Tony, we’ll get them both—” He’s forgotten, momentarily, what time it is, and he doesn’t remember until he’s already dialing, phone pressed too tightly against his cheek while Bucky squeezes his hand._ _

__Miraculously, Carol picks up. “Hello?” her voice is groggy, exhausted, and Steve hears Maria say something in the background. “Steve?”_ _

__“Carol,” Steve says, with such relief that they have someone older and experienced and more responsible to walk them through this that he forgets, for a moment, what he’s saying._ _

__“This better be the biggest emergency of your life,” she says, but he doesn’t miss the note of concern. “What’s up?”_ _

__Steve tells her, tension twisting into his voice, the violence coming unraveled. He’s so angry his breathing goes short, and he keeps it tight and controlled but the hatred simmers, abstract and unspecific, and when he’s done Carol is quiet._ _

__“Okay, Steve, just breathe.” He tries to. She goes on, “Do not call them again. Send me a screenshot. Tomorrow, I’ll run the number through our system, see if I get a match. Right now, buddy, it’s three in the morning and there’s nothing any of us can do, okay?”_ _

__“Sorry,” Steve says, shaking his head. “Sorry, oh my god. I just… It’s not good, Carol.”_ _

__“I know,” she says, her voice softer, soothing. “I know, you guys. Look, this is actually a good thing. Can’t do anything to track a letter, but a text… we’ll get them, okay? I’ll slap them in the face with a restraining order as soon as I can look the number up.”_ _

__Steve nods, forgetting she can’t hear him. “Okay,” he says, after a moment. Bucky doesn’t move. He doesn’t even react, and Steve wonders if he heard her. “Sorry, to call you at three…”_ _

__“It’s alright,” she promises. “Look, first thing tomorrow, I’ll check on it. Right now, try to sleep. Bucky okay?”_ _

__“Yeah,” Steve says, a beat too late. Bucky still hasn’t reacted._ _

__“Take care of each other. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Right now… try and sleep, okay? Take a NyQuil.”_ _

__Steve thanks her again, and she says something nice that he misses and then hangs up. Steve lays down, opening his arms a little, and Bucky tucks himself against him._ _

__Bucky is trembling. Steve can feel it, the rapid, frantic beat of his heart against his side, shallow breath against his chest. Steve holds him close, as close as he ever has, and kisses his forehead and plays with his hair, and it doesn’t make it stop._ _

__Bucky finally, finally talks. “What if—what if—” he closes his eyes. The words are so full and saturated in terror and shame and panic that he can barely get it out, and it sends an ache coiling through Steve. He wants to put his hands out and take it, all of it, every bit of pain that Bucky has had to bear, everything that weighs down at his soul. He can’t say it. Steve kisses his hair again._ _

__“It’s okay, baby, take your time. Whatever it is, it’s alright.”_ _

__Bucky takes a few more panicky, hard breaths. “What if—if it’s someone—what if they—” He swallows; a small, miserable sob pushes through his lips. “They know—they know where we live.” He winces; Steve does too. “What if they—if it’s someone—” He closes his eyes and presses into Steve’s chest, shivering. “Fuck, I’m sorry—”_ _

__“It’s okay, baby,” Steve repeats. “Buck, I’m right here. You can say anything, alright?”_ _

__“What if they come back,” Bucky whispers, so softly Steve almost misses it, “and—and—and they, um, they want—to—to hurt me, like that again.” His whole body has gone tense, stiff against Steve’s. Steve’s soul winces and sighs and settles into anguish._ _

__“That’s not gonna happen,” Steve says, and his voice shakes but it isn’t fear, it’s hardness, it’s violence. He doesn’t want to even entertain the possibility of someone coming back for Bucky, coming to hurt him again when he’s safe, when he’s healing, but he lets himself do it for a moment and it’s just blackness. It’s the cry of something at the earth’s core that had seared through him when Pierce kidnapped him. It blankets everything, the need to protect Bucky, the need to put himself between Bucky everything in the world that could harm him. It’s always there, but when it comes over him like this, when he thinks about Bucky in pain, it takes over everything, until taking care of Bucky is all that matters and he’ll do it, he’ll do it no matter what. “I’m not gonna let that happen. I swear, Bucky, I’m not gonna let you get hurt, not ever again, okay? If anyone—if they came back, I’d get them. You said it yourself” —he’s trying for lightness— “I’ve almost killed people for you, I’ll do it again.”_ _

__Bucky forces a laugh._ _

__Steve says, gently, “Look at me, baby.”_ _

__Steve turns towards him, and Bucky lifts his head a little, glassy, tearful blue eyes meeting Steve’s. “This asshole isn’t gonna hurt you,” he says softly. “I promise, Buck. You aren’t alone anymore, and you’re safe, and I’m always gonna protect you.”_ _

__He can’t tell if Bucky believes him or not. He nods, and closes his eyes slowly, like the motion hurts, and curls tighter into Steve’s chest, but neither of them fall asleep._ _

__***_ _

__“Did you send it?”_ _

__The first man’s voice is gruff, quick, determined._ _

__Through the phone, the second man sighs. “Yep. He saw it, too.”_ _

__“How do you know?”_ _

__A pause. “‘Cause he called a minute later. Wasn’t him, though. Rogers.” He snorts. “Fucking figures. That pussy won’t do anything on his own.”_ _

__“Jesus Christ.” The first man rolls his eyes. “Tell me you didn’t say anything.”_ _

__“‘Course not.” He’s almost offended. “I don’t need that psycho coming after me. He knows, though. I’m sure he saw the note, too, so.”_ _

__“That’s fine.” The man pauses, narrows his eyes. “That’s fine, for our purposes.” Another pause, thicker, suspended. “I have an idea. I think you should come see me, and I’ll tell you about it.”_ _

__The second guy smirks. “Whatever you say, boss.”_ _

__“This week,” the first man says, briskly. “Don’t text him again.”_ _

__“Got it.” The second guy hangs up, tosses the burner phone down, and brings his foot down on it until he hears the crack. Then he starts home._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)
> 
> i'm temporarily jessemovie on tumblr because the breaking bad movie is literally the only thing i care about anymore so come see me there and talk to me abt that :) love u all very much


	6. six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warninggggggs for descriptions of abuse plz be mindful

Bucky sleeps a little, restless, aggravated sleep. He has nightmares too quick and fleeting to wake him up, just images, reminders that haven’t permeated his consciousness like this in so long. Terrible, terrible things. The ground under his knees in an alleyway, some guy thrusting into his mouth while he closed his eyes and went somewhere else, a voice he didn’t know in his ear, _such a good little slut for me, hm, so good for daddy_. Blood caking his thighs, circling infinitely into the drain of the shower, brushing his teeth until his gums bled, until it felt like barbed wire, and still not being able to get the taste of them out, hands on his throat and squeezing the spot where his arm severed from his shoulder and in his mouth and spreading his legs and carved out of metal into fists that swung at him even when he said _stop, stop, stop,_ and he can’t make it _stop_.

_Money can’t buy that away, sweetheart._

Bucky bolts awake, or maybe he was never asleep, or it was that strange half-sleep that always felt like purgatory, that numbed his body but not all of him so he was half aware. Like what they smoked tonight. Like the drug Pierce slipped into his drink. Like what he used to do, himself, drawing away from every man who touched him, even the ones who tried to be gentle, even the ones who paid and didn’t hit him and thought they were okay because they used lube and condoms and asked if it was alright before they bent him over the table or positioned him on their bed, facedown and limp, some corpse on a sacrificial altar, like he was too stupid or not enough of a person to know where they wanted him. Before they thrust into him and pulled his hair and called him _so fucking hot for me, sweetheart, like you were born to do this_. Before they pretended not to hear him crying, even though he tried to keep it quiet, but he never ever could, because even the ones who didn’t try to hurt him did it, because he was too damaged, all the cells in his body torn out and rearranged wrong so that sex could never be tolerable.

 _Dissociation_ , Jennifer told him, more times than he could count. _Sex was a source of trauma and pain for a long, long time, so your body’s defense mechanism is to separate from what was happening to you._ He could shut it down, that way, could stop feeling foreign, impersonal hands prying him open, hands that somehow always felt like the ones that hurt him the most, but maybe the difference didn’t matter because they were all dangerous and they all wanted the same thing and they all could have been the hands that wrote that letter and those messages.

He wishes he’d dissociate now. _It isn’t a healthy coping mechanism_ , Jennifer told him once, when he had said it helped. _Shutting yourself down to feelings of distress doesn’t stop them. It just makes them harder to deal with_

He doesn’t think all the therapy in the world could make him able to cope with those texts.

Steve is also half-asleep, clearly, because he’s moving a lot, shoulders jerking restlessly, mouth pulled into a tight little grimace. Bucky doesn’t want to wake him because he’ll just start crying again and he doesn’t want Steve to wake up and have to comfort him more.

He gets up and goes back into the bathroom and showers again, but he can’t feel clean and he can’t get the nerves under his skin to stop burning and shivering and convulsing, and he can’t make any part of him stop shaking. He looks down, and his body looks alien and wrong, the kind of thing that should be propped in a medical museum as a warning or used as a prop for a horror film, like his skin is somehow crawling, like some undiscovered, incurable disease is pulsing through his veins and making him too vile to touch or look at.

 _Remember what you used to do for twenty bucks_?

A wave of nausea comes over him, making his vision fog for a moment, so intense that he feels invisible stitches in his body come undone. He barely makes it out of the shower to the toilet before he’s vomiting, his whole body convulsing and shivering, like it knows how rotted and dirtied and poisoned all of him is and it’s trying to scrape out what he did from the inside but it never will, it’s always there, always in him down to the marrow of his bones.

There’s a knock on the door and Bucky’s body goes into panic, panic because he’s naked and kneeling on a bathroom floor and he knows what comes next, but then Steve says, “Buck, baby? It’s okay, I’m right out here, can I come in?”

“One—one minute,” Bucky croaks, and his throat burns with the effort. He half dries off and stops the water and dresses, and Steve waits, waits even though the door is unlocked and if he were anyone else, he’d already have thrown it open and pushed Bucky back against the wall. But Steve waits. And even when Bucky pulls the door open for him, he waits to step inside, waits to reach his arms out and touch him.

Penny trots inside, past Steve, and rubs against Bucky’s legs. He crouches down and pets her, buries his face briefly into her fur as she presses close to him. Steve kneels beside them a moment later, and Bucky realizes he’s holding out a glass of water for him, and even though the shame is so vivid that he can’t make himself meet Steve’s eyes, he takes it and drinks it.

“Wanna talk about it?” Steve asks softly.

Bucky shakes his head. Steve hugs him, presses a kiss to the top of his head, and Bucky leans into it even though he doesn’t deserve it. He wants to apologize, even though there isn’t really anything to apologize for, even though _I’m sorry I’m disgusting_ isn’t really something you can say to your boyfriend. 

So instead, what he whispers, to relieve Steve of the miserable work of needing to take care of him like this, is “You don’t have to touch me.”

Steve tenses immediately, pulling his hands from Bucky’s back. “Do you not want me to touch you right now, baby?”

Bucky shakes his head; in fact, he feels cold and brittle where Steve is no longer holding him. “I just mean—I know that ‘m gross, it’s okay, I don’t…”

But Steve has already pulled him back into his arms. “Never gross, baby. I’m always gonna hold you, Buck. Never, ever gonna think you’re gross.”

Bucky is so exhausted that he can almost feel his limbs shutting off, feverish, heavy exhaustion that makes opening his eyes too much work. He holds onto Steve, too wrung out to cry or talk, and he blanks out for a bit and when he comes back, vaguely, he’s somewhere soft and warm and Steve is stroking his hair and the pain in him is lethargic and still.

***

When Bucky wakes up the next morning, everything is wrong but he can’t remember why. The bed is comfortable and Steve is still next to him, rubbing his shoulder absently, doing something on his laptop. Then he remembers. 

A headache splits in his forehead. He doesn’t even open his eyes before pain rushes in, hideous and blood red and lit up with terror, and Steve knows when he wakes up because he shuts the computer and lays down again, and Bucky buries himself in his arms.

They don’t tell their friends, but everyone can tell something is off. They’re the last ones up, though only by a little bit; when they make it downstairs, Peggy and Wanda are mixing pancake batter, and Nat is dj-ing, _Every Breath You Take_ because she’s been on an eighties music kick, apparently, while Sam makes coffee. Bucky hates that the moment is tainted, glossed over by pounding anxiety and the feeling of his phone burning through his pocket.

Keeping up appearances is a fucking olympic task, but Bucky considers himself a decent liar, and it’s pouring rain, so they don’t do much that he has to throw himself into, just curls up next to Steve on the couch while they watch a movie and play Cards Against Humanity or whatever. They notice, obviously, that he and Steve are off, but the best thing about being an abuse victim is that when you have days where you can’t make yourself talk much, no one questions it; they probably assume he woke up to a flashback and Steve was there to help and it worried him. Wanda asks if he’s okay, and he nods and mumbles some stupid excuse, because if he tells anyone right now it will surely crack him open from the inside. He’s supposed to see Jennifer the next day, so he doesn’t call her; he doesn’t have it in him.

“Will you come with me tomorrow?” He asks Steve softly, when he tells him this.

“Yeah, baby, of course,” Steve says sadly, and pushes a limp strand of hair away from his face.

In the middle of the day, Carol texts them, _you mind if I come over and talk tonight?_ and Bucky’s vision oscillates with dread.

It’s Sunday, so everyone needs to be home for the next morning anyway, which is fine because Bucky wants to be home, even with everything, because at home at least he can just tuck himself into Steve’s arms and fall asleep on the couch and not have to pretend. They don’t drive Sam and Wanda now; everyone except for Bucky and Steve are going back to Manhattan, and they’d only given them the ride up because Peggy and Nat had been there already, and Bucky barely registers any of it. He knows he’s holding Steve’s hand, for most of it, and he thinks he might fall asleep, but he isn’t sure, but all he knows is that when they pull into a parking spot Steve shakes him gently awake and he flinches too hard to hide.

They get home around six, order Chinese food, and watch The Office without really watching. They’re too exhausted to talk or cry or process; all they can do is wait, ignore the whine of fear in their temples.

Carol drops by at nine. “Hey.” She says half heartedly, when they get the door. She has her hands thrust into her jacket pockets; she’s grimacing. “How are you guys doing?”

“Fantastic,” Bucky says weakly. She gives them each a quick hug, then asks to come in and sits in the living room. Steve and Bucky take the couch and she takes the loveseat across from them, the fire throwing light the color of blood over her face, and Bucky knows, before she talks, that something is wrong.

“So.” Carol takes a breath, rubs her hands together. “I ran the number through our system.” She lets it hang for a moment, a pause that stresses the air, a pause that tells Bucky she isn’t about to say _and it led back to some dumb teenager who was being dared by his friends._ “It didn’t come up. And I tried to trace it to a location, but nothing came up there either, which means it was probably a burner.”

“So nothing,” Steve says darkly, his voice burnt through.

“Nothing there,” Carol confirms apologetically. “But. Um.” She runs a hand through her hair. “I also looked up your names, though. Just to… I don’t know, see what’s in your files. Not criminal record stuff, just what information there is on you, if someone was hacking stuff to find your numbers.” She raises an eyebrow, to make sure they’re still with her. They are. “And it turns out someone else ran your names through the system. From the seventeenth precinct, on October fifteenth.”

She leans back a little, and observes the reaction. It takes them both a moment, and then blood rushes to Bucky’s cheeks carrying only panic.

October fifteenth. The night the letter came.

“What the fuck,” Steve says quietly. He moves, instinctually, closer to Bucky, like whoever it was is about to kick their front door down and he has to be in position to fight them when they do. Bucky loves him, achingly so.

Carol says, more gently than Bucky has ever heard her, “Do you, um… do you know where the seventeenth precinct is?”

Blank looks from Steve and Bucky.

She says, carefully, “It’s the fifty-first street one. It’s where—”

But Bucky has already worked it out, and he grits his teeth and pinches the bridge of his nose. His body, he thinks, has suffered so much that another revelation like this is like throwing a bomb into a city that’s already ashes, but somehow it still sends a spiderweb crack through the glass of whatever is left of him.

Carol gives him a sad, resigned look. Steve, his hand gentle on Bucky’s back, says, slowly, “Um… what…”

“It’s Brock Rumlow’s old precinct,” Carol says, quietly.

Steve’s face sinks, like someone has just yanked the ground out from under him. “But…” Steve says carefully, after a moment, “but he’s in jail.”

And Carol doesn’t say anything, and Bucky’s heart pries itself out of his chest.

“What?” he says softly, dread rising vaguely, filling the room. “Carol, what—?”

She says, seriously, “I looked him up, after that. He, um. There was a technicality.” Her voice drips with disgust. “Mistrial, ‘cause apparently, one of the jurors from the original trial had been a victim of domestic violence.” What she’s saying doesn’t quite land, just hovers in the air, mocking, winking. “He was, um, represented by Zola. Judge who heard the case used to be a cop, and gave him time served.”

Steve says, softly, “Jesus fucking _Christ_.”

All Bucky can do is bury his face in his hands, because if he looks at Carol or Steve than that means the acknowledgement that this is real and it can’t be, because he isn’t strong enough to handle Brock Rumlow slipping back into his life, crawling in and infecting him like some thought-long resolved cancer, slipping a letter through their front door with hands that had struck and pried at and punished Bucky again and again and again, looking up through the window into their living room, into their home, their safest place. 

“Carol,” Steve says, his voice stricken, “are you sure—”

She passes them her phone, open to an article on some tabloid. Steve holds it. His hands shake.

_Brock Rumlow, a former NYPD officer serving time for charges of domestic abuse and aggravated battery assault against his wife, was released today after an appeal judge shortened his sentence. Rumlow was granted a mistrial when his new counsel, Arnim Zola, brought to light that one of the jurors who found him guilty had been a victim of domestic abuse, throwing the validity of the verdict into question. Zola, who represented former Principle Trust CEO Alexander Pierce this past July, used Rumlow on the witness stand during the Pierce case——a decision that ended up backfiring when allegations of assault from Rumlow against Pierce’s accuser came to light during his cross examination. Pierce is currently serving a life sentence._

_The jury determined Rumlow guilty of abuse a second time. However, Judge Grant, a former NYPD officer himself, states that he believed Rumlow’s seven months served were “more than fair” and he didn’t want to ruin a man’s life on “one mistake.” Sharon Carter, Rumlow’s ex wife, did not testify again during the appeal trial, and declined to comment._

Bucky doesn’t want to burst into tears again, but it’s beyond his control. He starts crying without even realizing it, helpless, terrified sobs because he thought he was safe, he thought they were gone, but he’s never going to be free of these people and he should have known that not even Steve, perfect Steve, could save him from the grave he dug for himself. He cries because he’s so scared and he’s hurting, so much that his limbs feel useless, and he doesn’t know what to do and there’s nothing he can do and because Rumlow is out. Rumlow who raped him and choked him and beat him and put a cigarette out on his skin, Rumlow who tied him up in his apartment and wouldn’t let him speak or move or leave or take off the blindfold for hours, Rumlow who smirked at him from the witness booth three months ago and hissed that he was willing to do anything, that he liked it, who hissed those same words in his ear while Bucky cried and screamed and begged for him to stop. He’s out and he knows where they live and he has Bucky’s number and he’s going to come back because happy endings don’t exist for him, because he was too happy living here in Brooklyn with Steve, writing and taking cooking classes and dancing around the kitchen and falling asleep feeling safe, he got too greedy and too used to some version of peace and now the universe is going to twist it away from him because he isn’t a person whose life is a four million dollar brownstone. It isn’t a partner who loves him and looks past the mangled thing he’s become and kisses his scars and makes him tea and waffles when he has nightmares. It isn’t safety, he doesn’t deserve that because he’s just a _stupid fucking faggot slut don’t act like you don’t want this quit fucking crying mine isn’t even the first dick you’ve sucked today_ —

“Bucky, baby, please look at me, baby it’s okay, I know, I know—” Steve, he thinks vaguely, his voice desperate, and then a woman’s voice, one he isn’t used to hearing in moments like this, “Hey, Bucky, it’s alright, babe, just take a breath, okay? Me and Steve are here—”

“ _Fuck _,” Bucky gasps, though it’s more of a whimper, because everything has just been torn to pieces and all he can do is watch it happen, just like he did every other time with Brock. His hands are around his biceps, and he’s squeezing so tight it hurts, so tight Steve lifts his own hands and pulls Bucky’s down gently.__

__“Don’t do that, baby,” he says, so, so gently. Bucky can’t stop crying, sobs that wrack him, furious, unfair sobs saturated in fear, and he’s pressed into Steve’s shoulder but he doesn’t know when he got there. He cries until it burns out, turns to ash like smoldering logs, and then they’re all eerily quiet._ _

__Steve is the one who speaks, finally. Carol is there, quiet and patient, but Bucky can’t pull himself out of Steve’s arms. It’s so similar to that first time they ever met that Bucky wants to laugh, almost, but what he actually wants to do is scream until his throat bleeds through._ _

__“What should we do?” Steve asks her, weakly, like she’ll pull the solution out from her detective knowledge and her parenthood and her generally being wonderful._ _

__She straightens up and brushes her hair back. “Well. You could file for a restraining order. The problem…” She bites her lip. “The problem is that there isn’t much solid evidence, and I don’t know if a judge is going to grant it when you can’t prove it’s him.”_ _

__“But…” Steve begins, and his voice quivers on the edge of violent, “But he _assaulted_ Bucky—”_ _

__“I know,” Carol says, “but believe me, I’ve seen these cases. You guys saw how hard it was to even get a case going when you had mountains of evidence. It’s not fair, and you’re telling the truth, but if you don’t give them irrefutable reasoning to believe he did this, it’s not gonna go well.” Bucky thinks, for a moment, about going through a trial all over again, and a shudder of horror comes over him._ _

__“So you think we shouldn’t do anything?” Steve says flatly. Carol closes her eyes._ _

__“I’m saying if you try to do something legally, right now, it’s going to end poorly. Look—” She touches Steve’s shoulder, and when he doesn’t bristle away, she goes on, gently— “so much of this is rigged. Unfortunately, Rumlow has the fact that he used to be a cop going for him. That goes way too fucking far in front of judges.”_ _

__“I don’t get—” Steve shakes his head, takes a breath. “Even if he’s out, he isn’t a cop again, right?” Carol shakes her head. “So then… how’s he running our fucking names through the system?”_ _

__Carol says, tiredly, “I’m sure he got someone to do it. The NYPD is a cult. All his pals work there, still.”_ _

__Bucky is still trying to figure out exactly how to breathe, and he hears Steve say “Fine. I’ll handle him myself.”_ _

__Before Bucky can get enough breath to say something like _no, you will not, you absolute fucking idiot_ , Carol scoffs. “No, you won’t, Steve, unless you want to get your ass kicked and end up with a lawsuit on your hands. I’m serious. You can not go after him.”_ _

__“We can’t just do nothing,” Steve snaps. Bucky winces a little, and he immediately looks guilty and, in lieu of an apology, holds out his hand and lets Bucky take it and squeeze._ _

__Carol fixes them with a steady, calm gaze. “I’m not saying do nothing. Rumlow used to be a cop. I’m currently a cop. Let me and Fury pay him a little visit.”_ _

__Bucky looks up. “Carol,” he says, shakily, “you shouldn’t—that’s not a good idea—he’s dangerous—”_ _

__She raises an eyebrow, cocks a smile. “Bucky, I arrest people like him every day. I promise I’ll be fine.”_ _

__So exhausted and scared and confused, they agree. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” Carol promises them, with a hug. “Get some rest.” Then she leaves, like she didn’t just slash Bucky’s world to pieces, and he stands there with Steve and tries to work out what just happened._ _

__***_ _

__Bucky showers after Carol leaves, taking a long time, while Steve paces around the bedroom and thinks about pistol-whipping Brock Rumlow in the face. He waits, disgusted, fury dragging itself over every cell in him, for something, for Bucky to come out so he can take care of him or for Rumlow to show up so he can take care of him, and eventually, the former happens._ _

__Bucky isn’t crying anymore. He’s just tired, his face gaunt and scared and resigned, and his hands are shaking in front of him. Steve’s heart splinters._ _

__“Talk to me, baby,” Steve says quietly. Bucky sighs. “Can I put my arms around you?” Steve adds, carefully._ _

__“Yeah,” Bucky tells him, leaning back into his chest. Steve hugs him from behind and Bucky fits their arms together, slotting his fingers into Steve’s from the front, exhaling shakily._ _

__“His poor wife,” Bucky says finally, his voice tired. He’s picturing getting the call, some lawyer telling him that everything he had put himself through to bring down Pierce was for nothing, and he shivers in Steve’s arms._ _

__“I wonder why she didn’t testify the second time,” Steve says softly, thoughtfully. Bucky shrugs._ _

__“I don’t know if I’d do it, a second time.” His voice is twisted into something small and scared and miserable. “It’s so much.”_ _

__“Yeah.” Steve kisses him on the cheek, and Bucky melts into him._ _

__“I’m so fucking scared.” Steve can’t see his whole face, but tears prick his voice. “I’m so fucking _angry_ that he—that he got away like that.”_ _

__Steve nods, closing his eyes and kissing Bucky’s shoulder. When they had fought, what feels like lifetimes ago now, and Steve asked Bucky about _specifics_ , he had meant Brock, in a way. He knows what Pierce did to Bucky down to the dates and places and terrible things he’d said while he tortured him, but mainly because the trial had dragged all that to the surface. Bucky has talked to him, sobbed to him about the things he went through, cried into his shoulder in therapy about it, but there are stories he still hasn’t told, gaping black holes of _specifics_ that Steve doesn’t know, and it starts with Rumlow. He wants to know, wants to cradle and soothe Bucky through every awful thing he ever experienced, but he isn’t going to push him, certainly not now. _ _

__“He’s pathetic,” Steve says, hate filling him up, boiling, spilling over the brim. “He’s just a scared, miserable asshole who has nothing left in his life.”_ _

__Bucky turns his face so it’s half pressed into Steve’s shirt, his body small and vulnerable, piercing Steve with a fierce urge to sweep him up and hold him through this storm. Instead, he kisses his forehead._ _

__“We’re gonna be okay,” Steve says, warmth lilting his voice. “I swear, baby, he’s not gonna get to us, not now or ever.”_ _

__And Bucky doesn’t really believe it, but he can’t afford not to, so he nods, making himself smaller in Steve’s arms, and begs the universe to let it be true._ _

__“You think you’re gonna be able to sleep, baby?” Steve asks him._ _

__“Um,” Bucky starts, and laughs shakily, “not—not really.”_ _

__“Me either,” Steve says truthfully._ _

__“‘M sorry,” Bucky whispers meekly. Steve shakes his head, shushing him, and Bucky brings their clasped hands to his lips and kisses Steve’s knuckles._ _

__“Sweetheart, you didn’t do anything,” Steve reminds him softly, kissing his temple. “What would help right now, baby?”_ _

__“I’m um—” Bucky swallows, wincing a little, then exhales. “Um. If I painted my nails, would you sit with me?”_ _

__This soft, grief-tinted wave of love floods Steve, filling him up, making him exhale. “Always, baby, whatever you like.” Bucky doesn’t answer, just turns and wraps his arms around Steve’s stomach and holds him briefly._ _

__They spread out on the bathroom floor, sitting across from one another. Steve’s watched Bucky do this a few times —it calms Bucky down, gives him something to focus on when he’s spiraling— and it always knocks him breathless with love and this is no exception. He paints them pink, almost the color his cheeks are flushed, the color of what it feels like when they kiss, and Steve watches, enchanted, and when Bucky finishes he looks up timidly._ _

__“Um. Would you… can I try doing yours?”_ _

__Steve leans in, surprised. “Really?”_ _

__“Do you mind?” Bucky looks nervous; all those weeks ago, when he’d mentioned he bought nail polish, he’d been so anxious telling Steve, like he was going to mock him or recoil, and it’s almost the same now._ _

__But Steve loves all of him, loves everything Bucky could touch and create, so he smiles and nods._ _

__“I’d love that,” he answers, the complete truth, and lays his hand down. Bucky chooses blue (“Matches your eyes,” he tells Steve, and love must knock him dead for a moment), and does it carefully, almost shyly, like back one year ago when he had taken his hand for the first time in four years and Steve’s heart had rewritten itself. Steve focuses on Bucky’s breathing, slowing to normal, on how his hands don’t shake too badly after a bit, and when he does finish, he gives Steve a soft, sad, smile, but an unmistakable smile._ _

__They’ll be okay. It’s impossible to love someone this much and have it not turn out okay._ _

__***_ _

__“So,” Nick says to Carol, the next afternoon, “wanna tell me why, off the clock, I’m driving you around to talk to some scumbag ex-cop instead of going home?”_ _

__Carol smiles. “Because I’m such good company.” He gives her a withering, amused look. “Because,” she says, propping her feet up on the dashboard and ignoring his scowl, “we need to have some words with scumbag ex-cop.”_ _

__Nick raises his eyebrows. “Care to elaborate?”_ _

__“Yeah. You remember Bucky and Steve?”_ _

__“Oh, from the time we arrested a billionaire, got through his entire case, then went to his apartment and found him bleeding out after kidnapping the victim? Rings a bell.”_ _

__“Atta boy.” Fury snorts. “Anyway. Brock Rumlow testified for Pierce, remember? Got up there and victim-blamed Bucky for a little while, didn’t mention that he raped him more than once.” Fury makes a noise of disgust, and Carol hums in agreement. “But whatever, he’s a fucking sleezebag, Maria Hill handled him. But now he’s out. Pierce’s lawyer represented him in an appeal, judge gave him time served.”_ _

__“Jesus,” Fury says. “That’s terrible, Carol, but we can hardly go arrest him on that—”_ _

__“We aren’t arresting him, just scaring him a little. Let me finish,” Carol says, and Fury shakes his head, suppressing a smile. “So anyway. A few weeks ago, Bucky and Steve are babysitting Monica—”_ _

__“—I almost forgot that you and Maria adopted those two,” Fury interjects._ _

__“It’s called having friends, Nicholas, pay attention.” He smirks, and Carol goes on, “Anyway.” And she tells him, about the note and the texts and the fact that their names had been in the system’s history from Rumlow’s old precinct, and when she’s done Fury whistles lowly._ _

__“Alright,” he says, somberly, “alright, I’ll scare him with you.” Carol finger-guns him, but she’s grateful. “It’s gonna be hard, though, Danvers.”_ _

__And he’s right. Normally, when she and Fury are trying to get something out of someone, information or a confession or evidence, there’s a playbook they can use, techniques; flipping through empty papers and murmuring to make them uneasy, letting them overhear mumbled conversations like _we already have him, if he knew what was good for him he’d admit it_ , giving one another long, meaningless smirks. All of that is futile because Rumlow has been on the other end too many times, probably done much more than lie a few times to suspects considering the stories she’s heard. They’ll be lucky if he lets them in._ _

__“Yeah, well.” Carol rolls her eyes. “We’ll play it nice, like we’re all cop buddies, and then we’ll cut his balls off when we get inside.”_ _

__“Whatever you say, Captain,” Fury replies, and turns the corner to park._ _

__Brock Rumlow lives in a shitty little apartment on twenty-fourth street above an adult film store, which Carol thinks was an incredibly poor choice by the landlord, but whatever. She buzzes and waits, crossing her arms and leaning against the doorframe, as Fury looks around._ _

__“Hello?” The box buzzes, an annoyed, raspy male voice answers._ _

__“Hi.” Carol puts on a sweet tone (“Your straight woman voice,” Maria told her once), “Brock?”_ _

__A pause. “Who is this?”_ _

__“We’re detectives, too. We just wanted to check on something with you, if that’s okay?”_ _

__The speaker goes dead, and Carol is about to ring again when the door pulls open._ _

__Brock Rumlow looks at them like he couldn’t be more inconvenienced, even though he clearly wasn’t interrupted. Carol’s never met him, but she imagines he’s looked better; he needs to shave and his eyes are bloodshot and the black tee he’s wearing needs to be ironed, but Carol smiles at him and Nick nods. “Mind if we come in?” Fury says._ _

__Brock sets his jaw. “What for?”_ _

__“You aren’t under arrest or getting an order or anything,” Carol tells him, “this is just something we wanted to check on.”_ _

__“Got a warrant?” Brock says shortly._ _

__“Brock,” Fury says calmly, “this isn’t that kind of a visit. Cop to cop.”_ _

__Brock eyes him, but that works. He jerks his head inside and they follow him up the stairs, exchanging a blank, full look._ _

__Brock’s apartment is straight out of the sex-offender-just-out-of-prison catalogue. It’s bare, an ugly couch propped in front of a tv that’s on to a sports channel, undone laundry strewn on the ground beside it, confederate flag poster left randomly on the wall (Fury catches her eye and gives her a blank, unsurprised look that Carol returns), beer cans left uncleared on the coffee table. Carol hates men._ _

__“You been busy since you got out of jail, Brock?” Carol asks, settling on his couch (she makes a mental note to wash her jeans) and crossing her legs. Brock glares at her._ _

__“What the fuck is this?”_ _

__“Got many hobbies?” she goes on, unphased. “Calligraphy, maybe? Letter writing?”_ _

__Brock’s jaw goes slack. “You’re the detective,” he says, and sneers, “who arrested Alexander.”_ _

__“Good friend of yours?” Fury says coldly._ _

__Brock purses his lips, rage flickering over his face. It doesn’t take long, Carol notes, to unwind him._ _

__“Get out of my fucking apartment,” he snaps._ _

__Carol ignores him, turning to Nick. “If I got out of a twenty year sentence with only seven months served,” she says, nonchalant as anything, “I wouldn’t try to put myself back in by stalking a victim.”_ _

__“Neither would I,” Fury responds, smiling darkly. “Kid with two close detective friends” —(he and Bucky aren’t even friends, but Carol finds it sweet anyway)— “who already won one court case could make things bad for me, if I did that.”_ _

__Brock leans against the wall, sneering. “Get out.”_ _

__“You gonna leave him alone?” Fury says, turning to him, eye narrowed. “You’ve done enough to him, I think. Take your undeserved freedom and try to be a decent human with it.”_ _

__Brock says, through gritted teeth, “I’m gonna call my lawyer.”_ _

__Carol stands, now, slapping a hand against Brock’s coffee table as she does, fingering her gun. “We’re here as a courtesy, Brock, because even though you’re a piece of shit, you used to be a cop too” (Bullshit, but she hopes he believes her) “and we’re giving you one warning. Don’t go anywhere near Bucky and Steve again, or it won’t be a restraining order, it’ll be an arrest and another twenty years and this time, nobody’s getting you out. Understood?”_ _

__She’s face to face with him, chin tilted up, smirking a little. Brock stares at her, disgusted. He’s taller than her, his body broad and muscled and cruel, and she imagines poor Bucky, twenty years old and starving and terrified trying to defend himself against him, and her stomach turns._ _

__“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snaps finally._ _

__“Right.” Carol says. “Well. The evidence we have against you does, and I’m sure they don’t feel like another trial, but they’ll do it if they have to. Stay away. You get one warning.” Then she smiles once more, pats him on the shoulder, and swings around to leave._ _

__“That go okay?” Nick asks her, when they’re back in the car._ _

__Carol nods, but she isn’t really listening, because she’s thinking about what she’d seen in there and she feels sick. On his coffee table, in between a pack of cigarettes and an empty bag of chips, was a check signed by Alexander Pierce._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i put up another little oneshot thing [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20534135)for this series its a lot less sad than the others lmao if u like it you might consider a comment and like :^)
> 
> speaking of i have been doing Very Badly emotionally lately but when i get messages and comments on writing stuff it really does brighten my day so thank u all so so much, lots of love to everyone see you probably next sunday


	7. seven

Jennifer gets the whole saga the next day. Steve and Bucky stumble through it, the texts and the call and Carol’s discovery that Rumlow was out and searching them up in his precinct. They’re unhinged, shaken and almost hysterical, breaking off in tears or rage or disgust until it’s all laid out, pieced together with ragged edges, for her to help them deconstruct. 

She looks slightly alarmed when they finish. Clearly, of all her predictions, this hadn’t made the list. Steve tells her that Carol’s going over there to warn him, and Jennifer relaxes slightly.

“Okay.” Jennifer nods, approving. “Okay, I’m glad she’s doing that. That’s good. Wait to hear what she says and if he stops. If anything else happens, file for a restraining order the second it does. Carol’s probably right that you don’t have enough evidence right now, but if it keeps going it’s not worth waiting out.” They nod.

“How are you holding up?” she asks Bucky gently. “Finding out that he’s out of prison is distressing.”

Bucky thinks for a moment. “I feel,” he says finally, and his hands shake. “like I’m never fucking free from these people.”

Steve squeezes his hand. Jennifer nods.

“He isn’t in a position to hurt you, anymore, Bucky. You’re in a safe environment, and he can’t violate that anymore.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says shakily, “but somehow, it doesn’t feel like that.”

***

Carol drops by that night to tell them that she and Fury warned him explicitly to back off, and left. There’s something off about the way she describes it, not quite meeting their eyes, uncharacteristically subdued, but Steve figures she’s omitting details that they don’t want to hear, things Brock said about them and such, so he doesn’t think much of it. All he feels, overwhelmingly, is relief. Bucky sits next to him, listening, eyes huge, holding Steve’s hand so tightly that he’s stopped feeling his fingers.

“Do you think—” Bucky says, and swallows, “Do you think he really… he’s gonna stop?”

Carol glances down. “I think he doesn’t wanna go back to prison,” she says, “and I’ll be surprised if he keeps it up. If he does, then you guys really should get a restraining order, evidence or not. But we were pretty clear with him that he better back the fuck off.”

“Are you sure it’s him?” Bucky asks, after a moment. Steve glances at him, confused.

“I mean, he didn’t say it, obviously.” Carol rolls her eyes. “But yeah, it’s him.” She bites her lip, though.

“What?” Bucky presses.

She blinks, shakes her head. “Nothing.” Carol glances between them, rubbing her hands together.

“So that’s… that’s good,” Steve says, after a moment, desperate to believe it. “He knows he isn’t getting away with it.”

“Yeah,” Carol says, glancing at her nails. “Yeah. I think he’ll stop. Just… keep an eye out, okay? ‘Cause if he doesn’t, then I’ll help you handle it. I want you guys to be safe.” And she smiles, this sad, protective sheen in her eyes.

She heads home a few minutes later. Bucky closes the door for her and turns back to Steve. “She isn’t telling us everything,” he says; it’s not accusatory, exactly, just a fact. “Did you think?”

Steve shrugs a little, wrapping an arm around Bucky. “I assumed she’s just sparing the details,” he says, grimacing. “You know. The psycho-obsessed rants or dartboard with our photos on it or whatever.” Bucky snorts, even though it’s all a little too fucked-up to joke about. Then he sighs, leaning heavily against Steve, getting his arms all tangled up in his sweater, so Steve kisses his hair.

“We’re gonna be alright, Buck,” Steve tells him quietly. Bucky nods, shivering, but his eyes are somewhere far away, glazed and focused on something else.

“What?” Steve asks him, cupping his face lightly.

Bucky looks up, his mouth twitching down, troubled. “It’s weird,” he says quietly, “It’s not exactly… his style.” Steve frowns, and Bucky goes on, “It’s almost… not enough for him. A couple texts and a letter.” He blinks, his face serious. “It’s like… he wasn’t ever careful, like that.” Bucky winces and looks down. “I feel like he’d be more, like, showing up at our house screaming threats until someone called the cops.” He reaches up to squeeze Steve’s shoulders vaguely, then hugs him around the middle again.

“He doesn’t want to go back to jail,” Steve answers, thinking about it. “He knows he’s on thin ice already.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, but he doesn’t sound at all convinced.

“You feel any better?” Steve asks him quietly, pushing his hair back. Bucky glances up and makes a noncommittal sound. 

“We know now,” he says, and closes his eyes. “It helps to know.” Steve nods. “I just… I didn’t expect him.”

“Me neither,” Steve says, his voice hollow. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

“It’s not your fault,” Bucky says, with a flat smile. Steve shrugs and cocks his head. “Fuck. I just…” He swallows, pain coming over his face. Steve moves his fingers lightly over Bucky’s cheeks, a reminder that he’s there. Bucky shudders. “I love our life, Steve,” he says softly. “I know… I know we’re still, uh, works in progress, let’s say” —he smiles sadly, and so does Steve— “but it’s so _good_ , we’re doing so good, and now, um…” He pauses, takes a breath. “It’s just so fucking unfair. We’re finally happy, we’re finally past the trial and everything, and now he’s gonna come back.” His voice hardens to diamond with loathing. 

Steve’s chest tangles into an ache. Stale hatred for Rumlow stirs, but beyond that, is grief for Bucky, working so hard to heal only to be blindsided by this. 

“Baby,” he says quietly, “I love our life, too. And he isn’t gonna change that. Nothing’s gonna touch us.” Bucky blinks, pretty blue eyes glistening, moonlight throwing a shimmer over them. “Me and you, baby, that’s what matters. He’s _nothing_.” Steve smiles down, love thrumming through him, charged and sharp as an electric current. “Everything that matters is right here. He won’t get near us.”

Bucky pushes up on tiptoes, very slowly, to peck a kiss to Steve’s lips, chaste and safe and shy. For a moment, it feels almost true.

***

Carol tells Maria that night while they do the dishes, all of it. When she’s done, she grimaces, and Maria pinches the bridge of her nose and mutters, “Dear god.”

“Yep.” Carol expels a breath of air. “I didn’t tell them. Is that wrong?”

Maria looks up; she looks so sad. “I don’t know,” she says quietly. “What if it’s nothing?”

Carol rubs her wife’s shoulders. They both know it isn’t nothing.

“Can you even do that from jail?” Maria asks her, after a moment. Carol shrugs bitterly.

“Apparently. Rich people get all kinds of fucking privileges in jail, too.” She rakes her hands through her hair. “I should tell them. They deserve to know.”

Maria groans. “Those poor fucking kids.” She pauses. “Poor Bucky.”

Carol nods, planting her elbows on the counter and digging her palms into her eyes. “It’s gonna fucking destroy him, baby. The other night when I told him Rumlow was out he was _devastated_.” She pauses.

“I don’t blame him.” Maria closes the dishwasher and rubs circles over Carol’s back. “What’d Nick say?”

“He thinks it’s the legal fees. Which, yeah, probably.” A pause, then she says, flatly, “But why’s Alexander Pierce paying Brock Rumlow’s legal counsel?”

Maria thinks for a moment. “Maybe what you see really is what you get, here,” she says hopefully. “Maybe Pierce told him he’d pay for Zola to represent him as long as if he got out, he’d harass Bucky. He just wants, you know, to get back at him a little.”

Carol leans forward so her forehead rests on Maria’s shoulder. “I don’t know baby,” she sighs, “Pierce is not a guy who’d put that much work into something for that little of a reward. He wants something else.”

***

Tony and Pepper get married two days after that. It surprises Bucky, that his and Steve’s world has just been kicked apart and reconstructed entirely differently, but something as simple and uncomplicated and beautiful as a wedding can still happen.

“We don’t have to go,” Steve says, when Bucky looks up, startled, and points out the date. They’re on the couch watching the Seaworld documentary and they’re both sniffling, and when Steve says that, Bucky lifts his head from his chest to pause it.

“That’s stupid, baby. Of course we’re going. Why wouldn’t we?”

Steve smiles tiredly. “I just thought… with everything—”

“You’re a groomsman,” Bucky points out, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, but you’re my groom.” Steve grins, and Bucky blushes furiously and elbows him. “And I mean… after everything, if you weren’t up to it…”

Bucky smiles, a little sad, but mostly fond. The last forty-eight hours have been uneventful on the stalking front; he thinks, maybe, things have resolved. He’s trying, the way Jennifer’s been drilling into him, not to let paranoia seep over everything, turn the whole world blood tinged and chaotic. _Maybe_ , he’s told himself, with her encouragement, _it really is over. He doesn’t want to go back to jail. He was trying to maintain the control he had over me while he was abusing me, but that isn’t what’s happening anymore and I’m safe now._

There’s a nausea that won’t subside, though. It’s mostly the knowledge that he’s _out_. That after fucking everything, he gets to go free, gets to live in the same city as Bucky, prowling and waiting and leering again. Bucky doesn’t want to think about him, doesn’t want to fucking see him or imagine what he’s doing, because before there was a definitive separation between them, what’s there between him and Pierce now, the knowledge that no matter how awful the memories and trauma and terror were, it was all in his head, they were contained. Now, he isn’t. Now, he’s here, able to go out and order takeout and see a movie and live, like he hadn’t slashed Bucky to pieces and left him bleeding out. Able to fucking come to his home and leave his one-dimensional horror movie villian notes, able to call him and text him and reach into Bucky’s chest and twist.

“Buck?” Steve says softly, pulling him out of it.

Bucky closes his eyes. “We gotta go, Steve,” he tells him, laying against his chest again. “We love those guys. It’ll be fine.”

And it will, Bucky thinks vaguely, all be fucking _fine_.

***

The wedding is held at the top of a building in Rockefeller center. It’s panoramic, a circular view of New York City stretching around it, white and silver and quiet with winter. The whole thing has been decked out in roses and crystal, sickeningly wealthy, but Bucky supposes that’s almost a requirement for them at this point. He arrives alone, thirty minutes before the start, because Steve had to be there early for groomsmen responsibilities, and as he’s heading in Steve texts Bucky _Tony is freaking out he’s going on about how he’s gonna mess it up and pepper should leave him for thor and he’s got no business bringing more starks into the world_.

Bucky snorts. _aw tony,_ he writes back _tell him pepper went into labor maybe he’ll pull it together_

Steve replies, _rhodey got him to sit down and do a shot of espresso which seems like a bad decision but lets see_. 

_that may kill him_ , Bucky answers.

_i miss you :(_ , Steve writes. Bucky bites back a ridiculous smile.

_youre gonna see me in 15 minutes_

_so? I still miss you_ Then, _i’m a little nervous to ask you but would you maybe wanna slow dance with me tonight?_ And five blushing emojis. Steve Rogers is a child.

Bucky types back, smirking _are you saying you like-like me?_

_I wanna go steady with you_ , Steve types back, _what do you think?_

Pepper looks gorgeous, and Tony looks nice, but Bucky really just watches Steve while the officiater talks. He looks so handsome, tall and elegant and striking in the navy suit that he had called boring but that Bucky thinks looks stitched for Steve to wear and move in, defining all the lines of his limbs and making his eyes look lighter, and Bucky, for a moment, forgets where they are and just smiles, incredulous that Steve is real and Steve is with _him_ , always with him. Steve’s proud little smile for Tony, melts into warmth when he meets Bucky’s gaze. He mouths _I love you_ , subtly enough that he could almost be taking a breath, but Bucky knows, and he mouths it back and smile lines deepen around Steve’s eyes and Bucky is in love with him.

They used to talk about getting married as an inevitability; the sun is going to rise in the east, the earth is going to take three hundred sixty five days to complete an orbit, Bucky and Steve are going to get married. He doesn’t even remember when they started saying it, but it wasn’t a conversation; one of them had just begun a sentence with “When we get married…” and that had been that. 

At first, they’d been more careful about talking about the future like that lately; mainly, because the future is still so shaky to Bucky. For a while, Bucky assumed it was because Steve wasn’t looking at this as permanent, didn’t want to be locked in for the rest of his life, and it made sense because the idea of Steve wanting him forever seemed impossible. It’s thawed away, that belief, tackled over months of therapy, chipping, slowly and methodically, at the idea that he was a burden. It’s still there, but it’s weaker, wavering, opening up space for Bucky to breathe and imagine a future, and it’s beautiful. And then when they went to the bank a few months ago, and Steve snapped, to the woman trying to tell them not to ‘combine’ their money, _we’re gonna get married_ , and they’d talked about it that night, lying in the old apartment.

“When I said that today,” Steve said carefully, lining their fingertips up like some delicate ritual, “was that alright?”

And Bucky raised his eyebrows and grimaced dramatically said “Yeah, I don’t know, this is really fun but I think we might want different things… it’s not you, it’s me…”

“Oh, fuck off,” Steve laughed, “you know what I mean. I wasn’t… I’m not gonna propose tomorrow, or anything, but, um… I see that for us. Is that… am I… is that what you picture?”

Bucky watched him for a moment, eyebrows raised, smiling, and then pulled his hand away from Steve’s to lay it on his chest and snuggle closer together. “If you did propose tomorrow,” he replied, and kissed Steve on the cheek, ”I’d say yes, just so you know.”

And yeah, he’d marry Steve in a heartbeat, with a plastic ring, down at the courthouse where they’d held the trial, if that’s what it meant. Because it’s _Steve_.

***

The reception is held just a floor above Steve finds Bucky right away, grinning and kissing him quickly before pulling an arm around his waist and heading to the party with him.

“You did great,” Bucky tells him, and smiles. Steve laughs.

“Didn’t fuck up the standing there too badly?”

“You got Tony through without having a meltdown,” Bucky points out. “It sounded intense back there.”

Steve huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, we had to sit him down before he started crying. No one knows how to overthink like him.” A pause. “They did great, though. Their vows were nice, right?”

“Mhm.” Bucky presses closer in Steve’s side. For all of his mocking when Steve said he missed him, Bucky is pathetically glad to be next to him again.

The first dance is to Faithfully, because of course it is. Tony, who Steve has never seen calm, who spends every second in motion, planning and reconsidering and building, his brain scattered across thirty different issues at any given moment, closes his eyes and smiles looks, for the first time Steve has ever seen him, settled. 

It’s a nice party. The space is beautiful, a three hundred sixty five degree view of the city, and sometimes they hate these obligations that have become such a part of Steve’s career but the party is good. They dance a little bit, and go to get drinks and as soon as they do, a girl who can’t be more than seven tugs on Bucky’s arm and asks him how he does his bun like that.

Steve grins, adoration filling him at Bucky’s surprised, endeared smile. 

“I can show you, if you like?” he says, and she nods and laughs.

“Can you show my friends, too?” she says, and points vaguely into the crowd.

“I got drinks,” Steve tells him, laughing, and Bucky nods, overwhelmed, and disappears with her and Penny.

“Two cokes, please, with lemon,” Steve tells the bartender, and then turns, infatuated, to watch Bucky. He’s somehow acquired a group of about six nine year old girls, all watching him talk, gentle and smiling, about how to do their hair, and Steve finds himself thinking that if he loved Bucky anymore his body would surely give out under the strain of it, only every day he loves him more and he isn’t sure how that’s still possible.

“If you ask him to dance, I’m sure he’ll say yes,” someone says next to him, and Steve turns to find Thor, waving down the bartender and grinning, watching Steve watch Bucky. He laughs, pulls him into a quick one-armed hug.

“Good to see you, man,” Steve tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. Thor smiles, slaps his arm back slightly too hard, reaching out for his beer.

“You look good,” he says to Steve, “I like the beard.”

He rubs a hand over the scruff. “Nothing like yours, though.” He pauses, grinning. “I like the long haired look.”

“I know you do,” Thor answers, nodding to Bucky, and winks. Steve laughs and shrugs. “How have you been?”

“Good,” Steve says, and smiles, “Really good, mostly. You?”

“Good, very good, I’ve got a few movies lined up, should be exciting.”

Steve lifts his drink in congratulations.

“So,” Thor says, rubbing his hands together, “I tried to call my brother.” Steve raises an eyebrow, listening. “He hung up on me.”

“Ah,” Steve says, unsure where this is going.

“But, you know, I know all the same people. I asked around.” He shrugs, makes a face like he’s deciding how bad it is. “It’s being talked about, yeah. There’s nothing solid yet, and if it happens, it would take years. But yeah, it is an actual idea, mate.”

Steve takes a sharp, miserable breath.

“Look, Steve,” Thor says, frowning, “this happens every year, with tons of stories and people and biopics that don’t end up getting made. It very well might be one of those.” 

“Is that what you think?” Steve asks him.

“I don’t know,” Thor says honestly, “I’d just keep an eye out.”

Steve nods, absently, and looks away again. Bucky is explaining, presumably, why Penny is there, with a lot of gesturing to her and nodding. The girls are all watching him, and then one of them says something and he smiles and nods, and Steve doesn’t realize he’s grinning until Thor raises an amused eyebrow at him.

“It’s cute,” he says. Steve cocks his head. “You two. You’re a nice couple.”

Steve grins. He loves being told that. “Thanks.”

Thor smiles, tosses back a swig of beer. “You seem good, Rogers. You seemed a bit depressed last time I saw you. No offense.” Steve shrugs again, raising his eyebrows, not disagreeing. “That ‘cause of him?”

“Yeah.” Steve smiles, hiding nothing. 

Thor looks proud, like an older brother instead of a distant friend. “That’s great, man.” On cue, Bucky materializes, tying his hair up again.

“Hi,” he says, “I think I might open a hair salon—oh!” He blinks, surprised, at Thor. “Hi.”

“Thor.” He sticks out a hand, and Bucky takes it, smiling.

“Bucky.” 

“Oh, I know,” he says, “Steve was just talking about how his life is comparatively better because of you.”

Bucky laughs, but he turns to Steve and his eyes have softened into love. “I have that effect on him,” he says dryly. Steve makes a faux exasperated noise and squeezes Bucky’s hand.

“Oh, god,” Thor says, straightening up, “My date’s talking to Obadiah, I should rescue her. Great to meet you, Bucky. I’ll talk to you guys, we’ll do dinner while I’m here!” He vanishes into the crowd, leaving them together.

Bucky turns to Steve, smirking. “Think he and his date are serious?”

“You asshole,” Steve replies, shaking his head.

“Baby, this whole thing?” Bucky gestures between them, grinning. “Completely a play to get to him.” Steve rolls his eyes, and Bucky laughs again, kissing him on the cheek.

“C’mon.” Bucky grabs his hand, setting their drinks down, and pulls him towards the floor. “Penny’s got about twelve babysitters.” Steve looks over, and sure enough, Penny is lying down, surrounded by several little children, basking in the attention.

“Cute,” Steve says, and takes his hand. Bucky wraps an arm around his neck and Steve lays a hand on the small of his back, waiting for Bucky to nod, and pulls close to him. Bucky tilts his head up to kiss him, smiling, and Steve becomes honey and light in his arms.

“Would a couple top forty have killed them?” Steve says quietly, to Bucky.

“Tony? Yeah,” he replies, and Steve snorts. “Don’t complain, I like this song.”

_All I know's since I found you, I'm happy when I'm in your arms, happy, darling, come the dark, happy when I taste your kiss, I'm happy in a love like this_

“It’s not bad,” Steve says, and Bucky smiles and lays his head on Steve’s shoulder. Their bodies are closer, Bucky’s weight pressed against his chest, their legs brushing. Steve closes his eyes, lets the feeling wash over him. When he opens them again, he catches Tony, looking rather flustered, crossing the room, and when he catches Steve’s eye he pauses, smirks, and mouths _cute_.

They stay that way for a little longer, through the next few songs, until Bucky looks up and smiles. “I’m gonna get a seltzer, you want one?”

“Yes, please,” Steve says, and kisses him. “I’m gonna go check on Penny.”

“Meet you over there,” Bucky says, and heads for the bar.

While he’s waiting, a guy shoulders past him, just hard enough that he jumps a little. The guy turns, raising an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” he says. He’s got a German accent. Bucky waves a dismissive hand. The guy, though, keeps his eyes on him.

“Helmut Zemo. James, right?” Zemo says, narrowing his eyes slightly. Bucky tenses.

“Bucky,” he corrects warily. Zemo nods and smiles in a way that suggests he knew that all along. Bucky takes a step back.

“I’ve seen you on the news,” he says.

Bucky’s heart drops. “Most people have,” he replies coldly, and he’s glad his voice doesn’t shake. 

Zemo smirks humorlessly. “Alex was a good friend of mine,” he says. His tone stays the same, casual and nonchalant, but his face grows hard and cold.

Anxiety shudders vaguely through Bucky. “Oh,” he says, after a moment, and turns away.

“You ruined a man’s life, you know,” Zemo says, loud enough that he winces and turns around. 

Bucky takes a sharp, shaky breath and stares at him. “He ruined mine first,” he says finally, “I’m done here.”

Zemo watches him, cruel, calculating eyes that look him over, and Bucky’s limbs are heavy with dread and he can’t make himself take off. “He told me about you, after the trial” Zemo says, and smiles again, poisonous. “Said you weren’t bad, for a twenty dollar hooker.”

Bucky’s breath becomes suddenly and violently sharp and thick, clouding his head. He brings his arms around his stomach.

Zemo’s mouth twists into something between a sneer and a smirk. “What are you charging these days? How much is Rogers paying you to be here?”

“Get the fuck away from me,” Bucky whispers.

“Oh, please, Bucky,” he says, and laughs. “People like you don’t change. Everyone here knows you’re just his glorified sex toy. It’s a disgrace that Stark has you here.”

The words send a wave of sickness over him. Bucky makes himself smaller, instinctually, and his breath has grown heavy as lead and sits, unmoving, in his chest.

“Hey,” someone else says, and Bucky’s knees almost buckle with relief. Steve has appeared behind him, hand gentle on his arm, Penny in tow, and he steps in and gives him a long look. “What’s going on here?”

Zemo’s face darkens, almost pissed off. “Nice meeting you,” he says to Bucky, and vanishes, so abrupt Bucky startles a little bit.

“Hey,” Steve says quietly, “you okay? What was that?”

And Bucky doesn’t want to create a scene, doesn’t want to break down here, but his chest is too tight and tears are pushing up into his head and _everyone here knows you’re just a glorified sex toy_ rattles him from the inside, and he just shakes his head because if he says it now, it will shatter him to irreparable pieces and he can’t have that in the middle of this wedding reception. Everything sways, suddenly, all of the lights turning and winking and glittering too-bright in his head, and he knows Steve is saying something but it blurs with the music and the background noise and it’s just a smear of sensation and he can’t take it.

A moment later, Bucky becomes aware he’s suddenly very cold, and the background noise has dimmed to a dull tug on his brain because, he realizes, they’re out on the balcony. It’s cold, so they’re alone, and Steve has an arm around his shoulder and is saying, “Buck, talk to me, tell me what happened.”

Bucky takes a couple of breaths that hurt his chest and realizes, after a few moments, that this is a panic attack. He crouches down so Penny can nuzzle him, holds on to her for a few moments, counts out the seconds between inhaling and exhaling. When he looks up, Steve is kneeling next to him, patient and worried.

“It’s—it’s nothing,” Bucky whispers, his voice quivering. “He was… he was just… just being an asshole, it doesn’t matter…” He can’t stop shaking, can’t stop fucking shaking, and he bites down on his cheek until it hurts like that will steady him.

“What did he say?” Steve asks, his voice growing dark.

“Nothing, just the same bullshit you’d—you’d expect—” But a sob rises and spills over and Bucky presses his hand over his mouth to try and suppress it. _Pull yourself together,_ he snarls to himself, but he doesn’t.

“Buck, what happened?” Steve whispers again, very softly.

Bucky swallows. “He’s a friend of Pierce’s,” he says shakily, like that makes it okay. 

“What did he say, Buck?” Steve sounds scared now, a tremor to the words.

Bucky shuts his eyes, feeling his balance wane a little. He shakes his head, the back and forth sending something tin and small rattling through his head. He can’t say it, can’t breathe those words in between them. “He was… he was just fucking gross.”

“Buck,” Steve whispers, “baby, please tell me.”

He doesn’t want to lie to Steve. “He said, um. People like me don’t change and—and—and everyone knows I’m your glorified sex toy.” He doesn’t look up. He spits it out like it isn’t rotting him from the inside, and the words taste like blood, and he feels, very suddenly, like something less than human.

Steve stares at him, his face splintering, somewhere between hate and grief. After a moment, he pulls Bucky into a tight, desperate hug, kissing his forehead. “Stay here, baby, I’ll be right back,” he says, his voice hard.

“Steve!” Bucky hisses, but he’s already vanished into the sliding doors and is weaving through the crowd. Bucky tugs Penny along and steps back inside, wincing at the heat and the noise, and watches Steve, too far away to catch now.

Zemo is talking to someone, and Steve steps in between them, says something to the other guy, and takes Zemo’s arm. Then he leans in and says something in his ear, quiet enough that no one else can hear it, and his face is a little blurred by distance and tears but Bucky sees it change, grow afraid and alarmed and almost panicked. Steve pulls away and turns, then, changing his mind, turns back and says something else. Then he’s done, and he makes his way right back to Bucky.

“Let’s go home, sweetheart,” Steve says softly. Bucky looks up and blinks.

“We don’t… I’m fine, we don’t have to—”

“Baby,” Steve says, “I wanna go home, too. Promise. I just wanna be with you.”

So Bucky nods, and lets Steve wrap an arm around his shoulder and steer him carefully through the crowd. They say goodbye to Tony and Pepper, who are too distracted to notice if anything is wrong, and Steve waves to Thor and the next thing Bucky knows Steve has hailed a car for them.

“Service dog,” Steve tells the driver, when he gives Penny an annoyed look. He nods, like he doesn’t believe them, but he lets them in anyway.

“What did you say to him?” Bucky whispers, and leans against him. It’s started to snow, flakes that reach the window and dissolve to water and run down the glass so the outside looks hazy and surreal, like that night he found Steve.

Steve shifts so his arm is tighter around Bucky’s shoulder. “I said,” he says finally, “that if he ever got near you again I’d smash his skull into the concrete, and if he thought I was lying, he should ask his good friend Alex. And then I said that you were the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I was sorry he’ll never love anything the way I love you.”

Bucky starts crying, suddenly, soft and impossible to stop. Steve holds him and soothes him until they’re home, puts an arm around him as they head inside. 

Bucky goes to shower immediately. He takes his time, shuts off his thoughts so all he’s aware of is the heat and the spray, and when he comes down a little later, Steve is making tea. He perches anxiously at the kitchen island, shifting his weight. Steve gives him a long, worried look.

“You know it isn’t true, Buck, right?” Steve says suddenly. Bucky scrubs a hand over his face.

“I know you aren’t keeping me around for the sex we aren’t having, yeah,” he says flatly.

Steve gives him a pointed, concerned look. “None of it’s true,” he says fiercely. Bucky doesn’t say anything, just drops his face into his hands again. His heart trembles. “Bucky?” Steve says softly. “Please, please tell me you don’t believe him—”

“He had a point,” Bucky snaps finally. The disgust is back, hot and violent as it had been the other night, turned inwards, twisted into anger and sorrow and misery that threatens to drown him from the inside.

“What?” Steve says, shaking his head.

Bucky looks up, tears burning in his eyes, making his head hurt. “You think everyone at that wedding didn’t look at us and think about the fact that I used to suck guys off for twenty bucks?” _Just because you dress pretty and have a nice house now doesn’t make you less of a slut, you know. Remember what you used to do for twenty bucks? Money can’t buy that away, sweetheart_. Bucky digs his nails into his palm. “I mean, _fuck_ , Steve, Jesus Christ, how does that not bother you? That half the people there think you’re just—fucking… paying me to be your full time escort—”

Steve’s eyes are glassy now. “Nobody thinks that—”

Bucky wrings his hands. “Fucking… Helmut Zemo does—”

“One asshole who’s a friend of Alexander’s? Of course he’s gonna be a piece of shit about it, that doesn’t mean—”

“It isn’t just him.” Bucky draws a breath; everything in him shakes like he’s going to fall apart. “You know it isn’t—”

“Okay,” Steve says, and fixes him with this look of such heartbreak that Bucky wants to vanish. “Even if—even if some people think that, I don’t care, I don’t care what some rich asshole thinks about us, I _love_ you, we know that isn’t true and that’s what matters. Bucky, Bucky, _please_ —”

The kettle whines, and Steve breaks off to shut it off and turn around.

Bucky says, his voice soft and hollow and scraped apart, “How does it not bother you?”

“Because it’s not true, I love you, we’re _partners_ —”

“Not that.” Bucky looks down. “The fact that I did all that for four years.” He looks up; Steve is horrified. “The fact that I’m just… just fucking used. You’re getting damaged goods, right? Sloppy seconds from every closeted asshole in New York—”

“Bucky,” Steve breathes, “Jesus, baby, no, don’t say that about yourself—”

“Why?” Bucky snaps, and feels so sickened with himself that he wants to reach inside and pull apart all the rusted metal pieces that keep him going. “It’s true, you know it’s true—”

“No, it isn’t,” Steve says firmly. “It just isn’t.”

Bucky stands, turning and crossing his arms over his chest, fingers curled around his upper arms. “Everyone else thinks it, I don’t know why you don’t.”

He doesn’t turn around, but Bucky hears Steve cross towards him, cautious, not touching him yet. “Buck, you had to _survive_ , you got _hurt_ —”

He whirls around, face hot. “Not every guy I slept with raped me,” he snaps. “That part doesn’t bother you?”

“You had to survive,” Steve says softly, simply. “I’d never… I’d never think less of you for that. And you didn’t want it, baby, you were—you were just a kid, you had nowhere to go, the guys who took advantage of that fucking knew better even if they… even if you didn’t say no—”

“Been talking to Jennifer?” Bucky snarls, unreasonably angry, resistance to what Steve is saying rising hot and spitting. It ebbs immediately. He backs away, covering his face, and mumbles “I’m sorry, that was—I’m sorry—”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Steve says gently, and, when Bucky nods, reaches out to touch his cheek. “And even… you didn’t have a choice, Buck, I know that, baby, and you know that too, and anyone who tries to make you feel bad for that has no fucking clue. They’re all just awful and stupid and they don’t know.”

“Stop.” Bucky’s voice goes strained, unusually harsh. Steve pulls his hand back. “Stop, please, please, for one second don’t fucking lie to me.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, stricken, “I’m not—”

“You are,” Bucky says flatly. He can’t do it right now, can’t put in the energy to try and not believe that he’s worthless when everything seems to be screaming it, crescendoing to an apex, too loud for him to possibly break down, and he’s tired and hurt and _everyone here knows you’re just a glorified sex toy_ is still making him feel sick because it’s true, of course it’s fucking true, he knows he doesn’t belong here with Steve, feels so stupid for ever trying to think he had. The knowledge that everyone who sees them together sees him for what he is makes him feel like the ground has been knocked out from underneath him, like standing on the deck of a ship that won’t stop rocking, throwing him to his knees and not letting him up. 

“No, baby, I’m not,” Steve says quietly, “I promise.”

Bucky grinds his hands against his face again. Everything feels so fucking wrong, the movement of the shadows and the way his blood is rushing through him too hot and too fast and the way Steve is just standing there, not moving to hit him or grab his throat or shove him to his knees, and it isn’t like the week before when he had been waiting for Steve to get angry with him; right now he almost wants it, just so he doesn’t have to try and convince him of the blatant fucking truth, just because he knows he doesn’t deserve patience or love or gentleness.

“I’m gonna go to sleep,” Bucky says finally. “I, um. I’m gonna sleep down here, I think.”

Steve looks shocked, for a moment, and guilt stabs at Bucky. They never sleep separately, haven’t since before they were back together, but Steve nods.

“Sleep upstairs,” he says softly, “I’ll stay down here—”

And that just hurts, corkscrews pain through him that even now, even looking at Bucky, disgusting and small and less than human, Steve is still trying to take care of him. “No,” he says, and his voice shakes, “Just… just go upstairs, I’m not—just don’t pretend, Steve.”

“Pretend—?”

“That I deserve this.” Bucky gestures around him. “That I’m not just a slut. That’s what this entire fucking fight is about, right? Let’s not kid ourselves. Everyone thinks it, I think it, don’t lie to yourself—”

Steve closes his eyes. “Buck—” He sounds wounded, and Bucky can’t stand it, any of it.

“Can you just leave me alone, right now?” Bucky says, not looking at him. 

Steve shifts his weight uncomfortably. “I don’t want you to be alone—”

“I’m telling you I want to be alone,” Bucky snaps. 

Steve winces and closes his eyes. “Okay,” he says finally, and walks out; Bucky flinches when he walks by him, but he doesn’t even touch him. Steve goes to head upstairs, then turns around. “I love you, Buck. If you need anything, come get me.” He sounds deflated.

Bucky waits until he hears their bedroom door shut, then sinks to the ground and sobs quietly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao i'm sorry
> 
> thank u guys for being so wonderful w your comments and thank you for all the nice personal messages last week ahhh i am still #struggling but gettin through it you know how it is
> 
> if any of u have read fangirl by rainbow rowell and rmr how the main character in that basically ignores her college responsibilities to write fic that has been me so you will likely be getting a chapter next week too
> 
> jessemovie on tumblr, you guys are the best


	8. eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings apply a lot plz be thoughtful and take care of uselves

Steve doesn’t sleep well. He wakes up a few times, because the bed is cold and he isn’t used to sleeping without Bucky in his arms and because he’s so angry with Zemo that it keeps jerking him back from sleep, and eventually he gets up and heads downstairs to check on Bucky.

He’s on the couch, curled up small, Penny sleeping in the crook of his legs. He’s shivering, because the blanket he’s using is really just a throw and too thin for this weather, and Steve’s chest aches. He thinks about Bucky earlier, the misery on his face and in his voice when he called himself a slut and _damaged goods_ and grief-tinted anger winds through his bloodstream. Bucky, for everything he’s still struggling with, has been doing so well, has made so much progress in how he views himself, and it’s been shattered by this German prick with a connection to Pierce, by Rumlow, by fucking Loki.

Steve’s fingers, he realizes, have constricted into fists. He rubs his knuckles over his eyes, exhausted, anguished for Bucky. He opens the chest and pulls out another two blankets, lays them carefully over Bucky, and turns to go back upstairs, but then Bucky whimpers softly, and he swings around and Bucky is shaking, his face screwed up in distress. Penny jumps up, crawling to nuzzle his face, and he whimpers again, louder, scared, and Steve rushes to him.

“Buck, it’s alright, baby, wake up,” he says gently, and after a few moments of Penny licking him, he does, sitting up, rubbing her ears. He blinks a few times, disoriented, and Steve worries he might have freaked him out by coming down, but then Bucky turns to him, eyes shining with tears.

“Steve,” he says, very quietly. Steve nods, swallowing. “I, um, fuck…”

“It’s okay, Buck,” he says softly. Bucky drops his chin to his chest, shakes his head.

“Could, um—” he screws his eyes shut, a sob escaping his lips. “Could I come upstairs with you?”

Relief slams him, leaves him weak. “Yeah, of course, baby.” _Always, no matter what’s happened, no matter what we’ve said, I wanna sleep next to you_. Bucky closes his eyes, relief sweeping over his face, and moves over.

“I’m so sorry—” he chokes out.

“Sh, baby, it’s alright. We can talk about it tomorrow, it’s okay. I’m not mad.” Steve reaches up and brushes a tear away, hands light on Bucky’s face. “I’m not mad at all,” he repeats gently. Bucky reaches up, vaguely, and lays his hand over Steve’s. Steve stands, reaches a hand down to help him up, and Bucky takes it, leaning against him as they head upstairs. When they lay down, Steve lets him be the one to initiate the touch; he curls quietly into Steve’s side, his forehead resting on Steve’s shoulder, like he isn’t sure how close he can get. Steve swallows and turns onto his side and lays an arm lightly over Bucky, still and protective, and Bucky inches closer, tucking himself into Steve’s chest.

He sleeps better, after that.

***

Bucky wakes up alone, the next morning, because Steve has an early meeting about an exhibit. He thinks, at first, that he’s mad. That tends to be the immediate response when they have any kind of argument, and in the last week they’ve had what’s probably the two biggest fights of their relationship to date, not even because of yelling or anger or bitterness, but because of the way it left them both feeling, afterwards.

Bucky sits up slowly, rubs a hand over his face. He feels almost hungover, lethargic with guilt and sadness, and his head is killing him. He gives Penny a quick pet before making himself get up.

Steve hasn’t texted him, which at first makes his chest clench, but when he gets downstairs he’s left a note in the kitchen. _Had to head out early. Back at like 2. Eat breakfast before you go to therapy. I love you so much_. Bucky reads it a few times, fingers tight on it. He isn’t mad; at least, he isn’t mad enough that he couldn’t still write _I love you_.

Bucky was awful to him last night. He thinks about it and shame curls hotly in his chest, biting and mocking and cruel, and he has to bury his face in his hands to fight it. He thinks about calling him, but he’s probably still in the meeting and anyway, he doesn’t think he has the nerve yet, so he shoves down some toast and coffee and heads into Manhattan to see Jennifer.

“How are you doing, Bucky?” Jennifer asks him when she wave him in, sitting down. He takes a breath and, with no control over it, starts crying immediately. Penny lays her head in his lap, and he pets her for a few beats.

“Sorry,” he croaks out, after several moments. She raises an eyebrow. “I mean… I’m not sorry.” He chokes out a rough laugh, and she smiles warmly.

“It’s alright, take your time. What’s going on?”

He tells her, about Rumlow and Carol and Fury, about how it’s making him feel like he’s screaming from the inside and the noise is being swept away into nothing. He tells her about the wedding and Zemo and the quasi-fight he had with Steve and how it’s still making him feel awful, wrong and ashamed and humiliated and scared about what he’s going to say when Bucky gets home, and when he’s done, something cold and hard and painful has lodged itself in his chest.

“Being told that by him,” Bucky whispers when he’s done, “really, really got to me.”

“How so?” Jennifer asks gently. He scrubs a hand over his face.

“‘Cause, um. I put so much into trying to believe that’s not true. And then having some guy say it to my face, and say that everyone else thinks, it, is, um. It really fucking makes me think it is true.”

She leans in. “And what, exactly, did he make you think was true?”

“Um. That I’m just a slut, or… his words were ‘glorified sex toy.’ But that. That I’m just… everything I did. That’s just who I am.”

“Bucky,” Jennifer says gently, “everything you did?”

Bucky’s insides coil. “It wasn’t all done to me,” he says hollowly, “most of it was consensual. And that makes me feel fucking gross, too. Just… in a different way.”

“Nothing he said was true, Bucky. He knows nothing about you. He’s a small, pathetic man trying to defend his disgusting friend, and everything he said was a lie. Bucky, you aren’t less worthy of anything because you were a sex worker,” Jennifer says firmly. He swallows, nodding, and tries to internalize it. One asshole at a party, everything he’s reclaimed and built and told himself over the last year. He’s no one, he’s nothing. Bucky bites his lip. “And, I don’t know if I agree that it was mostly consensual.” He winces. She goes on, “You started when you were seventeen, you were desperate, and adult men took advantage of that, even if they paid you or asked if you were okay with it. You’ve told me that you sometimes said yes even when you didn’t want something, right?” He nods quickly, tears burning against his eyes. “That’s not really consent. There are lots of ways to say no. Ignoring them just because you agreed initially doesn’t make it alright.”

“So,” Bucky says flatly, “the dozens of guys who fucked me were all rapists?”

Jennifer says calmly, “It’s not about labeling them as rapists. It’s about the effects it had on you, and understanding that that isn’t normal or healthy treatment. They were dehumanizing and objectifying you and you were very, very young, and you didn’t have other options. Being able to acknowledge that that damaged your perception and relationship to sex is important. And it’s important that you’re able to recognize it when you feel like you’re responsible for the way that what happened to you while you were a sex worker is affecting you now. That way, if someone else says something to you, like last night, that causes that kind of shame, you don’t jump immediately to thinking that, because of your past, you don’t have worth.”

“Not, um…” Bucky mumbles, “not everyone in sex work is being abused, necessarily.”

“I know that,” Jennifer says, “but I’m talking about you. You were just a kid, Bucky. You had no money or home or other options. There was an inherent power imbalance in your case when older, more stable men used you for that. Even if it wasn’t Pierce, or Rumlow, or the people who hurt you who you said no to explicitly, they knew better, they had more power, and they still took advantage of you. That’s traumatic in and of itself.”

Bucky whispers “But I said yes.”

“But you agreeing to it was still compromised, Bucky.” She pauses. “Did you ever see other teenagers in prostitution?” Bucky nods. “Would you tell them that because they were saying yes, everything that was happening to them was fine?”

“But it wasn’t the same,” Bucky argues, “I wasn’t… for most of it, I wasn’t a minor. I know… I get that there were… that, um, that Pierce and Rumlow and Rollins and… and some of the other times… that it was rape and it—” He swallows, shuts his eyes; _how is this still so hard what the fuck is wrong with you—_ “wasn’t my fault. But I was eighteen and I knew what I was getting into and I can’t… I can’t just say I had no say in all of it, ‘cause I did.”

“You being eighteen didn’t make you automatically ready to fend for yourself and sell sex to men in their twenties and thirties and sixties,” Jennifer says firmly. “Bucky. No adult should have let an eighteen or nineteen or twenty year old living on the street have sex with them for money. You were trying to survive. People who took that from you were taking advantage of you.”

Bucky swallows hard. They’ve talked about this some, in the past, but so much of therapy and recovery and trauma has been about being raped and abused and beaten and blackmailed and threatened and the people who hurt him so badly that he needs Penny to stop men he doesn’t know from getting close to him. The other guys, the majority, the men who payed him and used condoms and didn’t hit him and ignored the fact that he had to stifle sobs through sex, they haven’t been touched on a lot because the fact is, the nightmares and flashbacks and terror aren’t really about them.

Bucky touches his face and realizes he’s crying again. Finally, he mumbles, “Steve, um, Steve said basically that to me last night and I yelled at him.” He closes his eyes. “He didn’t… I don’t even know why, you know? He was just… I just couldn’t handle what he was saying, even though… it’s not like he was doing anything. He was being sweet and good and I just snapped.”

Jennifer says “You were on edge. It happens to everyone. Especially when you had been triggered earlier.” She pauses. “What was he saying?”

Bucky shuts his eyes. “The usual stuff I need to hear. That it wasn’t my fault and I wasn’t a slut and I didn’t have a choice. And the stuff you just said, kinda, just less, um, articulately. And I asked him if he’d been talking to you, pretty bitchily.”

Jennifer smiles, and even Bucky does, a bit. “You know how hard it is to unlearn the messages that you’ve been working against. And when the guy last night said that to you, that directly contradicts what you’re working so hard to recognize as the truth. That was four years, and you’ve been in therapy for eight months. It’s not a shock that hearing Steve tell you the things you’re trying to accept made you snap, because it’s a lot easier to sink back into believing what you’ve accepted as the truth for much longer.”

“I don’t want him to be mad,” Bucky says quietly.

“If he’s mad, what’s the worst that’s going to happen?” Jennifer asks him. “Steve isn’t going to hurt you, he isn’t going to kick you out. He loves you and he’s going to want to talk and figure it out.”

Bucky rubs his hands together. “I just feel so bad for yelling at him,” he says softly. “I didn’t… he should be mad. It, um. I had—I’m having that… that thing where, uh. It feels like… like he should… like I deserved to be, um. Hurt. Punished. Um. For doing that.” The words are ugly and jagged on the edges and catch in his throat. Jennifer just listens.

“You never deserve pain, Bucky. You’re talking about abuse right now. You getting impatient with Steve would never warrant him hurting you.”

Bucky closes his eyes. “It’s getting bad again,” he whispers. “We’ve, um. We never really fight but, you know, we’ve had moments, and it hasn’t… I haven’t felt that in a while, until this week. Thinking he’s gonna hit me, or whatever. Thinking he… he should hit me, um. Like I’ve —fuck— like I’ve been bad, or something.” Tears push past his eyelashes. _Shut the fuck up, stupid little whore, you need to be punished, James, you need this, or how are you ever going to learn how to be good, stupid fucking slut, can’t fucking do anything but take it—_ Bucky takes a clipped gasp of air. “It all feels—I feel really, really bad lately. And I don’t… I’ve been doing better.” His throat swells closed.

“In the last few weeks, you’ve had more than one major trigger. That’s going to cause distress and re-emergence of symptoms,” Jennifer says patiently. “It doesn’t mean that you aren’t still doing well. It’s normal that you’re going to react to all the stress.” She pauses. “Did you tell Steve last night? That you were worried he was gonna hurt you?”

Bucky shakes his head, pressing both his hands to the side of his neck. “It wasn’t that, exactly,” he says shakily. “I, um. He wasn’t arguing with me. It was pretty one sided. I just… my brain went immediately to, um, ‘I talked to him wrong so I deserve to be hurt.’”

Jennifer’s eyes go concerned. “Were you able to recognize that that wasn’t a healthy reaction?”

Bucky rubs his neck.“I don’t know. Kind of. I just… I can’t stand feeling like he’s mad at me. I know… I know it’s not the same, but um. I always… I always think it’s gonna be like when they got mad.”

“We talked about this a little last time,” Jennifer says, “but I really think telling him when you feel like that is so important, Bucky, so that he can know what it is that he’s doing that triggers that, and so he can give you some peace of mind about it. You know Steve better than anyone. Logically, realistically, is he ever going to hurt you?”

Bucky shakes his head. She cocks her head, wanting to hear him say it. “Steve, um, isn’t gonna hurt me. It’s not… the people who taught me that if I do the wrong… the wrong thing I deserve pain were, um, abusive. And they aren’t… they can’t do that anymore.”

And he repeats that to himself when he heads inside to talk to Steve.

***

When Bucky gets home, Steve is in the studio, working on a drawing. It’s a big one, all ink, mountains and little villages built into the sides and sheep grazing fields. He started it because Bucky is writing something that takes place in an area like that and now he’s pretty proud of it and he might use it for this new installation he’s been offered and as always, Bucky is making him better.

He’s listening to music and he doesn’t hear him come in. The door is open, but Bucky knocks anyway, soft and nervous. Steve yanks his headphones out and swings around; he’s leaning on the doorframe, biting his lip, hands behind his back.

“Hi,” Steve says, and gives him a little smile.

Bucky swallows. “Hi,” he says, and shifts his weight. So they’re on speaking terms, at least. Steve wasn’t totally sure. “Can I, um… can we talk?”

“Yeah,” Steve says quickly, and caps his pen. “Yeah, I think we should.”

Bucky nods, but he still doesn’t come in. Steve moves up to his desk and sits, pulling out another chair for Bucky, and he joins him after a moment.

“Can I start?” Bucky says quietly. Steve nods. “Okay. Um. Well—” he pulls his hands from behind his back, lips pursed nervously, and thrusts a little bouquet of tiny blue periwinkles at him. “First of all, these are, um, a sorry for being an asshole to you last night gift.” Bucky’s eyes are big and hopeful, and goddamn, Steve loves him.

He laughs, tiredly, and takes them. “I love them,” he tells Bucky, and relief washes over his face. “Thanks, Buck. And you weren’t… being an asshole—”

“Can I finish?” Bucky asks quickly. Steve nods and smiles. “Okay. Well, I was kind of an asshole, and um. You didn’t deserve that, you weren’t doing anything wrong, Um, I didn’t mean to… react like that. I just… it was hard for me, um… it’s a lot easier for me to… to think bad things about myself than the stuff that you were saying, and I got… resistant, I guess. And then, um, I felt… I thought…” He bites his lip. Steve lays his hand open on the table and Bucky takes it and squeezes. “You didn’t do anything that made me think you were gonna hurt me,” he says in a small voice. “It wasn’t that. I just. Sometimes, I feel like if I do the wrong thing, um, I… deserve that. So when you… I really, really didn’t feel like I deserved to be, like, cared for, after I yelled at you—”

“Baby,” Steve says softly, but Bucky shakes his head.

“—So, um, I pushed you away and… and I’m sorry. If you’re mad, um, I get it.” He pushes his hair back. Steve sighs, gazing at him.

“I’m not mad at you, baby” he says truthfully. Bucky relaxes a little. “I wasn’t mad last night. I was just… I don’t know. Kinda frustrated, a little hurt, um. Really worried.” He hesitates. “I didn’t realize how bad it made you feel, Buck. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Bucky exhales. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Steve. It wasn’t you.”

Steve reaches his other hand for Bucky’s. “I just want you to feel like you can talk to me, baby, when it feels like that.”

Bucky looks down. “I know,” he says softly. “And I do. I just… it was hard. I talked to Jennifer about how, um, it’s a lot easier for me to just… reject it, you know? But… but I’m working on it, I promise.”

“I know,” Steve says softly. “And you’re doing so good, baby.” Bucky smiles, eyes still cast down. “We’re good, my love. I’m so sorry you felt bad last night.”

Bucky takes a shaky breath and looks up again. “Thank you for being so good last night,” he says quietly, “I love you. I really love you.”

“I know,” Steve says, and smiles. “I love you more.”

Bucky stands and, shyly, moves in to curl up against Steve. 

“C’mere,” Steve says, and pulls him into his lap, so he’s flush against his chest. Steve kisses his forehead, and they stay there for some time, quiet, calm, okay.

***

They have dinner with Sam and Wanda a few nights later, the long awaited confrontation that got pushed to the back burner when Rumlow texted Bucky. They go to a Thai place in Park Slope and, as they walk there, talk over how to mess with them a bit, smirking. They’re both already inside when Bucky and Steve get there, and they separate a few feet when they spot them, waving. 

Steve and Bucky don’t bring it up until halfway through the meal. They let them get comfortable; watching them, in hindsight, makes Bucky think they should have worked it out long ago. Sam keeps throwing her quick glances, and she laughs at his painfully bad jokes and at one point, Bucky thinks they’re playing footsie, but he can’t tell for sure.

“So,” Bucky says finally, squeezing Steve’s hand under the table. “Wanda, there’s this guy I think you should meet.”

Sam chokes on his water. Wanda raises her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Friend of Steve’s” —Bucky gestures, real casual— “he’s really sweet, really hot, good sense of humor; actually, Sam, he just got his phD in psych.” Steve takes a swig of water to avoid laughing. Sam gives them a rather pained smile.

“Oh,” she says again, “uh, yeah, maybe. I don’t know if I’m dating right now…” Sam and Wanda are determinedly not looking at one another.

Steve kicks Bucky lightly under the table; Bucky nudges back. “You sure? I think he’s in the neighborhood,” Steve goes on, “we could have him meet us—”

“She said she wasn’t dating,” Sam replies, very much a final remark.

Steve smirks. “I was asking Wanda—”

“Don’t have him come,” she says quickly, “I’m good. I’m sure he’s lovely.”

“He is,” Bucky says. And then everyone is quiet, until Steve catches Bucky’s eye and the two of them collapse into wildly immature laughter, as Wanda and Sam give them a bewildered look.

“Guys,” Steve says finally, when he gets his breath back, giving them an exasperated cock of his head. Bucky nods in agreement, resting his chin on Steve’s shoulder and giving them a vague, exasperated gesture.

Wanda and Sam share a look and both sigh visibly.

“You guys are such assholes,” Sam tells them, shaking his head. He rubs his forehead, very much caught in the lie.

“You’re the ones who didn’t tell us!” Steve replies, flicking his napkin at Sam. “Was the plan to just keep it under wraps forever?”

“Kind of,” Wanda says neutrally. Her cheeks have gone very pink.

“To be fair,” Sam says, “at first, we didn’t tell you because we weren’t sure where it was going. And then it just got to the point where it was too late.” He pauses. “How’d you know?”

“Well, you were so careful with the touching under the table” —Bucky says, and they both look mortified— “but at Peggy’s last week, we saw your little kitchen rendezvous.”

Wanda purses her lips, but she isn’t upset, just sheepish. Bucky looks, incredulously, between them. 

“How long?” Steve asks them.

They glance at each other. “‘Bout two months?” Wanda says, squinting like she’s trying to figure it out. “Little less, maybe. It, uh. We ran into each other here, that night I came over, Bucky? ‘Cause Steve and Sam were out, and then, uh, when I was leaving your place, I stopped for a little at the Barnes and Noble, and when I left Steve had just gone home and I ran into Sam?” She’s smiling, blushing a little; clearly, it’s killed her to not relay this story. “And, uh, we ended up going to that donut diner on Seventh Ave? And just… talked there for a long time.” She smiles up at him. Sam smiles back and lays an arm around her shoulder. Steve looks mock-scandalized.

“Oh, shut up, man, we have to deal with that every second,” Sam replies, gesturing to him and Bucky; Steve’s arm is laid comfortably over his shoulder, and Bucky is reaching up to hold his hand. Bucky pouts and kisses Steve on the cheek.

“Anyway,” Wanda says, rolling her eyes at them, “I think we started going out then, right? That was our first kiss.”

Steve and Bucky, purely to annoy them, both scoff. Wanda flips them off. 

“Well,” Steve says, grinning. “You’re literally our two favorite people. So Bucky and I would like to take some credit for this.”

“No way,” Sam says with a laugh, “you let us just be friends for a year without every trying to set us up. You get nothing.”

Steve and Bucky slag them for a while longer, good-natured and beaming, until Sam starts listing off embarrassing stories about them in high school to make her laugh (“Steve used to ask me what color I thought Bucky’s eyes were, like that’s something a normal person pays attention to”) until they back off of them. By that point, they’re comfortably nestled into their booth, peace settling over them, and Bucky is momentarily breathless with love for all three of them. He leans into Steve’s side and smiles, letting warmth pull him under.

 _I’m so sorry I didnt tell you_ , Wanda texts Bucky, an hour later, once they’re long home. He’s lying in bed, and Steve is in the shower, nearly out. Bucky shifts up on the headboard and writes back _don’t be sorry!! I’m really really happy for you :)_

She replies, thirty seconds later, _I love you._ And then, _I just felt like if I talked about it too fast I’d jinx it or smth_.

Bucky bites his lip; they’re alike in that way, in feeling like the good things have a shelf life, like if they let themselves become comfortable, grow used to contentment or joy or relief, it will get snatched out from under them and the real world will be that much more painful. All those months ago, when he had first found Steve again and every day was a countdown to when it was going to fall apart, Bucky hadn’t told Wanda for weeks for the same reason. It’s part of why, several lifetimes ago, they had become friends so fast; the companionship of believing that joy is fleeting and unsafe and carefully allotted to you is a strong one.

So Bucky writes back _i know. I get that, babe_. Then he adds, _i think you guys are great together. if any guy can come close to maybe having a shot at deserving you, it’s sam._

_He makes me really happy,_ Wanda writes back. _He’s a really good guy_.

 _i know :) you’re forgetting I’ve known him since 9th grade. Sams the best. and you deserve to be so happy_. And she does. He hopes right now, Wanda is curled up next to Sam, watching her favorite movie and eating her favorite ice cream and feeling so loved, by Sam and by Bucky and by Steve and by all the people whose lives are better because of her. She’s suffered so much; she deserves a soft, happy love story more than anyone.

 _Right back at you babe_ , she replies. As he reads it, Steve comes back into the bedroom and smiles at him, so soft and so full of adoration.

Bucky smiles back. He does deserve happiness. And right now, he’s got it.

***

Everything has almost returned to normal when it finally happens.

He’s supposed to meet Natasha for lunch. It’s Thursday, and Steve is at Clint’s office for a check-in about his upcoming projects, and they’re all meant to meet up in Soho in forty minutes. He’s waiting for the train, headphones in, Penny sitting next to him. She jumps to her feet, which isn’t unusual; Bucky is fucked up enough ( _traumatized,_ he thinks, _not fucked up_ ) that any man getting close to him has the potential for an all-out panic attack, so she’s tasked with the job of keeping out half the population. He glances up, carelessly, and terror solidifies in his chest and drags him underwater.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Rumlow says, and looks him up and down. “Been a while, hm?”

The thing about this kind of terror is that it doesn’t dull over time. It’s always the same, the white hot blade of a knife slicing up his spine to his neck, twisting his insides into a rope and jerking it back and forth, prying his lungs open and emptying all of the air out of them until he’s frozen and stiff and unable to breathe. Bucky screws his eyes shut; everything has begun turning, too bright and too fast and nauseatingly real, and he doesn’t realize it but Rumlow has backed him into the side of a pillar.

“You could look happier to see me,” he mocks, “I know you’ve missed me.”

“Stop,” Bucky hisses, shaking his head; something rattles, cold and unplaceable, in his mind. “Stop, you can’t—you can’t be here, you can’t do this—”

“Surprised they let you live in this neighborhood,” Brock says, ignoring him, “lots of kids. Lot of wealthy families. Didn’t think there was a big demand for hookers here.” He smirks. “Although, someone as pretty as you, I’m sure everyone wants a turn, isn’t that right?”

Bucky’s soul lurches and shudders and flakes to pieces. “Get away from me,” he whispers. Brock raises an eyebrow, stepping in. Penny has put herself between them, but he’s close, so fucking close, close enough that every cell in Bucky’s body screams and burns and curdles. Brock snorts, steps in closer. “Get… get… get the fuck away, I’ll call the police—”

He sneers. “And tell them what, _Bucky_? It’s not illegal to wanna catch up.” Bucky has pressed his back against the pillar. Brock nudges at Penny with his foot; she doesn’t move. He looks annoyed and sidesteps her, leans in and smacks his hand hard against the pillar, right next to Bucky’s face. Bucky chokes out a gasp of fear and hates himself for it.

“What—what do you want?” Bucky whimpers. Brock smiles, this hideous, cruel thing that sends terror coiling tighter inside of him.

“I’ve missed you,” he says. “I’m thinking about moving myself. Park Slope is nice, huh?” 

Bucky closes his eyes, some desperate, wild, childish part of him fantasizing that if he can’t see him, he isn’t here.

Then Brock touches him, grabbing him hard by the jaw and forcing him to look into his eyes. Bucky goes catatonic with fear, his whole body freezing and stalling and collapsing into uselessness. Rumlow’s hands are rough and cruel and send his brain reeling, all the learned fucking pain rising up and spilling over, and all he can do is whimper incoherently.

Penny, for the first time ever, becomes vicious. She lunges at him and growls, sharp and dangerous, and she’s a big enough dog that Brock jumps back and scowls. Bucky slumps backwards, stale relief winding through him.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” he snaps. “Control your fucking animal, James!” She’s backed down but she’s still growling, low and unsettling. Bucky doesn’t say anything; his voice has ceased to work, become gasping, shrieking smoke in his chest. Brock looks furious, a look Bucky knows in the darkest part of him, the look right before he’d hit him or kick him or _teach you a fucking lesson, stupid little bitch, put you in your fucking place—_

“Needs a fucking muzzle,” Brock snarls, and then, his mouth twisting, “Just like you, huh, sweetheart?”

Tears make him dizzy, and the satisfaction on Brock’s face makes him sick and everything is a whine of noise and fear and Bucky can taste blood. There are other people on the platform, too far to notice right now but close enough that if he screamed, they would hear and come running, but he can’t make himself, can’t get his breath to work.

“We’re doing this again, huh, Bucky? You gonna pretend you aren’t a little whore who wants everything I give you?” He’s enjoying this; his face is contorted with malice. “Is that what you do with Rogers? Or’d he figure out how to make a naughty little slut like you listen?”

Bucky flinches; he’s pulled in on himself, head tucked and arms crossed and shoulders curled in, perfectly submissive and still and scared. Brock tries to step in and Penny growls again, and he snorts in annoyance.

“Service dog? Really? They don’t reserve those for the people who didn’t ask for everything they got?” He might as well have reached into his chest and gotten a grip and twisted. The words ring in his head, blood tinted and violent, until it’s heaving through him, writhing like some vile parasite, leaving him wrung out and nauseous. Disgust washes over him again, hot and acute and turning him inside out.

“Fuck you,” Bucky whispers, voice quivering. His eyes are still squeezed shut.

“Nah, that’s my job.” He smirks, and Bucky’s soul rears back like he’s been slapped, disgust burning him. “Slut,” he mocks, “Forgetting where you belong, aren’t you?”

“Get the fuck away from me,” Bucky grits out. All of him is shaking, a tremor so deep inside him that it won’t ever stop, locking down everything in him and not receding, not letting him do anything but stand here, frozen, and _take it fucking TAKE IT worthless little bitch good for one fucking thing—_

Brock scoffs, mildly annoyed, like he’s dealing with a riled up child. 

There’s a dull roar, that Bucky thinks is in his head but realizes, a moment later, is the subway. Brock glances over his shoulder, then turns back and smiles, casual as anything.

“Ladies first,” he sneers, and, when Bucky doesn’t move, “No? Suit yourself, James.” He reaches across Penny and pats him roughly on the cheek, and Bucky chokes out a sob. She growls again, and he snorts and glares. “See you soon, baby.” Then he strides through the doors, winks, and disappears into the midday crowd.

Bucky stands there, trembling, swaying on his feet, vision blurry and warped and flickering grotesquely, until another three or four trains come by. Then he squeezes his eyes shut, and when he opens them again, finds himself kneeling on the floor at home, sobbing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry i promise this isn't just gratuitous endless torturing bucky
> 
> thanks for being so kind and wonderful in the comments you're all precious
> 
> jessemovie on tumblr


	9. nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for flashbacks! its the italicized section please be mindful bc it could be triggering

Steve shows up for lunch a little late; the meeting went longer than he expected, and Clint rattled off a bunch of opportunities for new projects that were being offered to him, and he nodded at a few—some tv series’ that want his work in the background for museum scenes or house decorations and whatnot, a couple of potential exhibits, a mural in Dumbo. He hates handling the technicalities of it. Clint says a few more things about the press and interviews and Steve says he isn’t interested, and when he’s done he texts Natasha and Bucky that he’s on his way and heads towards them.

When he gets to Soho Garden, though, Bucky isn’t there yet. Natasha is out front, talking to someone, and he realizes, concern tugging weakly at him, that she looks worried. He cocks his head as he gets close; her eyebrows are knitted together, hand in her hair in distress, and when she spots him she waves frantically.

Heart dropping, Steve jogs to her.

“—slow down, okay, babe? Just—just breathe for me, Bucky, alright?” Panic twists through Steve. “Bucky, you gotta slow down, just… okay, babe, Steve is here, you want me to put him on?”

“What the fuck?” Steve says, holding his hand out and wringing it. “Nat, gimme the phone… what’s he—”

She says, giving Steve a stricken look, “I’m giving you Steve, Buck.”

He grabs the phone from her. “Buck? Baby, you okay? What’s going on?”

“He—Steve, he—he’s here—” Bucky gasps, breaking off into dry, hysterical sobbing. “He’s gonna—he—Steve, I can’t, I _can’t_ —”

Steve’s brain catches the words and squeezes, wringing blood out of them, and before Bucky’s done with the sentence he’s flagging down a cab. Natasha follows him into it, alarmed.

“Baby, take a breath for me, can you do that?” Steve says, as calmly as he can when it heart is ricocheting into his ears. “Five seventy two, tenth street, in Brooklyn,” he mumbles to the driver, and then says, back to Bucky, “Baby, baby, it’s gonna be alright. It’s a panic attack, baby, I’m on my way, you gotta breathe—”

He isn’t, though; he’s still hyperventilating on the other end, and the panic grows sharper. “Bucky, baby, please talk to me,” he says, a tremor weaving through the words. Bucky is mumbling something he doesn’t catch, terrified, whimpery sounds that make Steve feel like he’s shattering from the inside out. Natasha is watching him with huge, worried eyes. “Bucky,” he says suddenly, realizing he should have checked earlier, “babe, are you home?”

“Y-yeah,” Bucky manages, and some of the tension in Steve’s shoulders goes slack. “He’s… he’s gonna…” Another terrible, muffled, inhale of air. “No, I can’t, I—please, _please_ —”

Terror not unlike what Steve felt that night Alexander took Bucky knits deliberately under his skin. “Can you please go faster, I’ll pay you double,” he says to the driver, who shoots him an annoyed look and picks up the speed by maybe five miles an hour. “Baby, you gotta tell me what’s going on, I’m coming—”

The line cuts off.

“Fuck!” Steve snarls, and redials him. Bucky doesn’t answer, and dull, raw fear materializes in his chest, heavy enough that it sucks away his breath.

“Steve,” Nat says shakily, laying a hand on his shoulder, “you gotta breathe, too. I’m sure… it might be just a panic attack, maybe something triggered—”

“Remember what it was last time you told me not to worry?” Steve snaps. Natasha purses her lips, and he slumps back. “Sorry, I’m sorry—”

“It’s fine,” she says shortly. “He’s gonna be alright, Steve. It’s not…” He isn’t listening to whatever she says next. He isn’t listening to anything but the crescendo of white noise in his ear that falls away when he realizes they’re back at home. He blinks, trying to work out how they got there so fast, but it doesn’t matter and he realizes it’s because he’s spent the whole drive texting Bucky a slew of increasingly panicked messages.

Steve tosses Natasha his wallet and scrambles out of the car. By the time she’s paid he’s already unlocked the front door and burst in, gasping, “Bucky!”

It doesn’t take him long to find him, which sends relief raining down on Steve. Bucky is curled in on himself in the living room, bent over at the waist, his knuckles on one hand are white around the handle of a kitchen knife. Penny is licking and nuzzling at him, whining a little, tail beating against empty air, and getting no reaction.

“Buck,” Steve says softly, dropping to his knees, the word hitching in his throat, “Buck, it’s alright, it’s me.” Nothing. A weak thrum of panic shoots through Steve’s blood, settles in his chest. “Bucky, baby, it’s Steve. It’s just me. I’m not gonna hurt you, you’re okay, you’re safe—”

“Steve,” Natasha says, and he startles and swings around. She’s standing in the doorframe, face slack with worry. “Do you need me to do anything here?”

“Could you, um, could you grab a glass of water?” he says. She nods and heads for the kitchen. Steve turns back to Bucky.

“Baby, I’m gonna move closer,” he says quietly, and inches in. Bucky wraps his arms tighter around himself, so Steve pulls back. “Buck, love, you gotta breathe for me. It’s Steve, baby. I’m right here, I’m not gonna hurt you, I’m not gonna touch you, okay?” Nothing from Bucky again. The panic is all out now, writhing through his limbs, high and awful in his voice as he says, “Buck, baby, please… please give me the knife—”

Bucky’s eyes are still closed; he’s rocking back and forth, barely lucid, face screwed up in misery and terror. His fingers go, somehow, tighter on the handle. He thinks about _that night_ again, about Bucky’s gaunt, terrified face and the gun trembling in his hands and how he had looked right through Steve, how all he had seen, everywhere, was pain and violence and someone who was going to hurt him until he couldn’t breathe, and it’s the same look right now. How Steve couldn’t be sure that Bucky wasn’t going to swing around and try to protect himself from Steve, and it’s the same hideous uncertainty now.

Steve backs off, slowly, until he’s standing with Nat in the doorway.

Natasha sounds scared now. “Steve, what’s—”

“I’m calling his therapist,” Steve says, fumbling for his phone. He finds her in his contacts, fingers trembling, and slams on the call button. Nat touches his arm lightly; the comfort glances off of him and he starts pacing. The room feels smaller, packed in, unable to contain this impossible emotion without shuddering to the ground.

“Hello?” _Thank god, THANK GOD_ , Steve thinks.

“Jennifer,” he gasps, “um. Hi. It’s—it’s Steve—” It occurs to him that he only has her number because, months ago, Bucky sent it to him and said, _Just in case you ever need to reach her_ , looking self-conscious, and Steve had squeezed his hand and said _I doubt it_ but taken it anyway and Jesus fucking Christ, he’s glad he did.

“Steve?” she says. “Hey. Is everything alright?”

“Bucky, is, um, I just got home and—and he’s… I don’t know, I think it’s… I don’t _know_ , he won’t say anything or respond to me, he’s… he’s got a knife and he won’t… I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to help him—” Steve is stammering, the words thick and dry in his throat.

“Is he going to hurt himself?” Jennifer asks sharply.

Steve squeezes his eyes shut. “No, it’s not that, it’s um… defense, I think, he… he wouldn’t give it to me—”

“Are you sure? Not even accidentally? Or hurt someone else, by mistake?”

“No,” Steve says hoarsely, “no, he’s just… holding it.”

“Okay. Steve, take a breath,” Jennifer says calmly. “It’s dissociation. He’s probably having a flashback or a panic attack that got too intense.”

“But… but I’ve seen that happen before and this is worse, he isn’t… he’s not even replying a little bit—”

“It can get really severe. Are you in the room with him?”

“I’m in the doorway. It’s—it’s the living room.”

“And he isn’t responding to anything?”

“No.” Steve swallows, tears building vaguely behind his eyes.

“Okay. Can you put me on speaker?”

“Yeah—” Steve does. Then he steps in, carefully, and kneels again, leaving a few feet between them, setting the phone down, a tentative, flammable offering. “You’re—you’re on.”

“Bucky?” Jennifer says. He doesn’t open his eyes, but he shakes his head, just a fraction, enough of a response that Steve relaxes slightly. “Bucky, it’s Jennifer. Steve tells me you’re dissociating. Right now you’re at home, in Park Slope, in your living room, with Steve and Penny. You’re safe. Steve, can you describe the room?”

“Yeah,” Steve says shakily, and gulps. “Buck, hey. We’re in the living room, we’re on our rug, it’s white and gray, we’ve got plants hanging everywhere ‘cause you made us go to Lowes and buy a ton of them, remember? We’re right by our couch, it’s maroon, and our coffee table, and we left our mugs out this morning, the ones from Spain—” Steve sags with relief. Bucky is blinking now, still looking down but breathing more evenly, his face confused and scared but responsive, finally. “Baby? It’s just me, it’s Steve, we’re home, we’re okay.”

“St-Steve,” Bucky whispers, like he isn’t sure. Then he winces, like he was wrong and somebody’s going to—

Steve grits his teeth until the thought burns away. “Yeah, baby, hey,” he says softly, “hey, you’re doing so good, Buck. I’m right here.”

“Steve,” Bucky sobs, his voice fracturing, “Steve, he’s gonna—he’s—he’s here, he’s gonna—he’s gonna come back—fuck—”

Worry winds itself up again. “You’re okay, Buck,” Steve whispers, “baby, no one’s gonna hurt you, no one’s here, it’s just me and you, okay? We’re okay, we’re safe, I got you.” He pauses. “Baby, put down… put down the knife, okay?”

Bucky looks down at his hands and his eyes go, impossibly, wider. His lips part slightly, a small, silent breath, and slowly, like he doesn’t trust himself, he unclenches his fingers from around the handle.

“Bucky?” Jennifer says, and they both startle, having completely forgotten she was still on the line. “How are you doing?”

Bucky blinks. “I—um—I don’t—” Steve, carefully, clicks off speaker and hands him the phone. Bucky gives him a miserable, grateful look and takes it. Then, to Steve’s impossible relief, he reaches for his hand.

Steve sits by him while he talks, thumbing along the back of his hand. He doesn’t say much; Jennifer gets him to do some breathing until he calms down, but when she starts asking, Bucky’s eyes go glassy and terrified and finally, he whispers, “Can I—can I come see you tomorrow?” She agrees. When he hangs up, Steve opens his arms and Bucky collapses into his chest.

For a long time, Bucky just sobs into his shirt, shaking like he’s about to break, like he’s already broken. He’s stopped mumbling and Steve keeps whispering to him, pressing kisses into his hair and rubbing his back and saying _you’re okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re safe_. Steve hasn’t seen him this bad in months; he isn’t talking, just choking out weak tears into Steve’s shirt, shaking so bad it’s a near-vibration, body fraught with terror. Steve’s heart swoops down into a perfect apex of fear. This isn’t normal, this isn’t just a panic attack or a bad flashback. Something has happened.

“Buck,” Steve says softly, “I’m gonna get you some food, and—”

“I wanna take a shower, can I, um—” Bucky says suddenly, “pl-please, Steve.” His eyes are glazed over, wide and scared and desperate, and he’s talking to Steve again like he’s fucking in charge, or something, and panic grows taut in Steve’s chest.

“Yeah, baby,” Steve says, quiet and even, “yeah, you know you don’t—you don’t have to ask me.” He winces, thinking back to that first night, more than a year ago, Bucky braced in on himself, mumbling, _Can I—can I take a shower?_ like Steve was going to make him fucking pay for it, or something.

Bucky nods absently. 

Natasha is still in the kitchen, gazing blankly out the window. She blinks and shakes herself out of it when Steve comes in. “Everything okay?”

“I don’t know.” Steve braces his elbows on the island and presses his face into his hands. “He didn’t say much.” He swallows thickly. “Something’s wrong.”

Bucky comes down forty minutes later, wrapped in a big sweater, eyes red-rimmed and exhausted. Penny trots loyally along with him and nuzzles at his legs when he sits at the counter. Wordlessly, Steve sets down the tea and soup he’s made him and Bucky squeezes his hand as a thank you.

“Baby,” Steve says softly, “what’s going on?” 

Bucky doesn’t get a word out before he’s crying again, breathless and unbearable, hands pressed over his face. Steve touches his back instinctually, and immediately thinks _bad fucking call._ Bucky doesn’t just flinch; he jerks his whole body away, pulling his arms around himself, chin tucked against his chest, shoulders caving in, small and limp and the picture of terror.

“Bucky,” Steve says, his voice shaking, “baby—”

“Hey,” Nat says gently, “Bucky, hey, babe. Let’s sit down, yeah? It’s just me and Steve, you’re okay, no one is gonna hurt you.” He lifts his chin and looks at her, blinking slowly. Steve swallows and slumps his shoulders, shrinking back a little. Bucky knows him in a way most people don’t ever know themselves, their souls crafted and shaped next to one another, slotted perfectly together so that every piece of one another is imprinted on the inside of the other’s heart, solid and real as any organ. Bucky knows his hands and his voice and his smell, knows Steve would never touch him with anything but gentleness and tenderness and love. 

At the end of the day, though, Steve is still a man who’s taller and bigger and stronger than he is. No amount of love changes the fact that when the panic takes control like this, Steve checks every box for _threat_. 

He gets his breath back a little, and Nat squeezes his shoulders and gets him to sit. “You’re good, Buck, it’s all fine,” she says, gentle in a way Steve has only seen her a few rare times. She’s talking slowly, smiling, and she gets him to relax before he disappears into full on panic again.

Bucky closes his eyes, panic slipping over his face again, familiar and worn. “Brock,” he chokes out, and his face caves in again, shoulders heaving with a sob.

“What? What did he do, baby, did he—?”

Bucky flexes his fingers, three, four times, staring at his hands. “At—at the subway. He—fuck…” Bucky starts rocking again, eyes shut. Very carefully, Steve touches his shoulders, and, when Bucky leans into his chest, wraps his arms around them. The panic is out of control now, bounding through him, metamorphosing into abstract, searing hate towards Rumlow and terror for Bucky.

“Baby, what happened, please tell—”

“He—he—he came up to me.” Bucky’s throat is dry; the words are weak and shaky and rotted through. Bucky shakes his head again, pressing further into Steve’s chest. 

“What?” Steve manages. “He was… he was _here_?”

Bucky nods. “He… fuck—” He’s shaking again, fraught with panic, and Steve holds him closer and kisses his hair and wrestles down the dread that’s rapidly materializing in his stomach.

“Buck, baby, did he hurt you?” Steve says shakily. He glances at Natasha; she’s watching it all from a few feet away with huge, horrified eyes, one hand pressed over her mouth.

Bucky whispers miserably, “N-no. The platform… other people…” His hands constrict around Steve’s shirt, face hidden again in the fabric.

“Did he touch you?” Steve asks. A knot forms in his chest, tight and intrusive.

Bucky nods. The knot pulls itself free, sending rage cascading uncontrollably through him.

“Baby, what did he do to you?” Steve asks shakily. He blinks a few times to clear his eyes; anger has sent white noise swelling unbearably, his vision going staticky and grainy, some poorly recorded video that’s been taped over so it’s nothing but color and chaos.

It takes Bucky a moment. “N-nothing,” he whispers, “touched my cheek. ‘S all.” His voice hitches with another sob.

Steve closes his eyes. “What did he say, love?” 

Bucky gasps, whimpery and soaked in fear. “Same—same shit you’d expect,” he mumbles. Steve feels, abruptly, cold all over. Bucky doesn’t want to repeat it and Steve isn’t going to make him, so he grinds down the rage and the nausea and the terrible need to know. Bucky looks up, suddenly, pale and burnt out and devastated. “He—he—he knows where—he fucking… _followed_ —” A sheet of terror falls over him again, and he’s staring down, sobbing quietly.

All Steve can do is hold him and murmur to him and stand here, comforting him, not fucking protecting him, not breaking every bone in Brock Rumlow’s body.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Steve says softly, even though the words sound flimsy. “I promise, Buck. You’re okay, you’re gonna be fine. Oh baby, I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry I wasn’t there.”

Bucky doesn’t say much more about it. Steve doesn’t want to force him. He knows when it’s too much for him by now, knows when misery and fear and anger gets twisted up inside him, vines that tangle against one another, weaving through his insides and clogging his mind and his throat so he can’t speak without making them thicken and whine and twist harder. He wishes he didn’t have to know Bucky’s sorrow so intricately. He wishes he could eradicate it forever, throw a shield up between Bucky and anything that has ever made him unhappy.

He can’t. So he does what he knows Bucky needs; holds him, rocks him, lets love and comfort and safety pour out of him, trying to let it soothe him, even though at best it’s just a weak numbness over the pain that will fade later.

Nat stays for a while. She doesn’t have to, but she doesn’t want to leave them. Steve feels tight all through his limbs, his insides turned to elastic that has been stretched too far, pulled taut and needing to be released, energy that he needs to put towards kicking the shit out of Rumlow that’s just sitting, gathering useless, infuriating inertia. It’s familiar, this hatred that bounds through him, attaches itself to the air he breathes and bonds with all the molecules in him until it’s seeped into his bloodstream. It festers, right now, dormant and waiting, because all his energy is directed towards Bucky, softened around the edges and thrown into trying to ease his suffering even by a fraction, uncoiling itself as Steve holds him on the couch, circling soft fingertips over his shoulder and stroking his hair. Bucky’s head rests on his shoulder, all of his energy gone, resigned to leaning into Steve, his body pulled small and vulnerable and raw. Natasha rubs his shoulder on the other side. She’s worried, Steve can tell, her mouth pulled into a tight, insistent grimace, her eyes thoughtful and absent. Eventually, she glances down, mutters “Fuck,” and stands.

“I gotta go,” she says, wincing apologetically. “I’m supposed to get dinner with an old professor.”

“Go,” Bucky says weakly. “Thanks for staying, Nat.”

She sits again and hugs him, her eyes squeezed shut. “I’ll call you guys tomorrow.”

“I’ll get you a car,” Steve tells her, kissing the back of Bucky’s head before standing. “Where are you going?”

“Don’t get me a car.” She rolls her eyes, and Steve gives her a stern, stubborn look, and she sighs. “Smith’s. On sixty-first.”

He taps it into Uber and walks outside to wait with her. It’s cold, the air brittle and sharp and overly-bright with chill. When they’re on the porch, Natasha squeezes his arm and looks up at him.

“How are you doing?” she asks carefully.

“He’s fucking dead,” Steve says darkly. He expects her, for once, to agree. Natasha, though, grabs both his shoulders and stares at him, stony and intense.

“Steve,” Natasha says seriously, “don’t go after him. Just don’t.” The wind howls, desperate and far away, making them both shiver. 

Steve barks out a laugh. “I’m gonna break his fucking neck—”

“Don’t,” she repeats. “I wanna slit his throat, too, but it’s gonna make things worse if you try to deal with it yourself.”

Steve slaps his hand against the doorframe in frustration. “I’m not gonna do fucking _nothing_ —”

“Steve,” she says slowly, “we’re talking about a cop. That means he knows how to defend himself, he knows how to fight, probably owns a gun. If you go after him like that, you’re gonna get hurt.”

He’s about to say something impulsive and exaggerated like _I don’t give a fuck_ when the car pulls up. Natasha purses her lips and lingers, watching him.

“Promise me,” she says.

“I thought,” Steve says, a hint of impatience in his voice, “that of all people, you would be on my side here. You saw what he fucking did to Bucky just by fucking speaking to him.”

“Yeah,” she says, “and like I said, I think he deserves to get tossed off a building. But don’t be stupid, Steve. Please.” She looks down, uncharacteristically worried, rare desperation winding through her voice.

The driver honks.

“Don’t,” she repeats. Then she throws her arms around his neck and hugs him for a few moments longer than she normally would. “I’ll text you. Thanks for the car. I love you.”

She vanishes, down the steps and into the car. Steve stands there briefly, shivering, before heading back to Bucky.

***

_He’s in the back of Brock's car, spread out over the seats, his wrist tangled up in the fabric of the seatbelt. It hurts, digs into his skin until he can’t feel his hand anymore, but he focuses on that because if he focuses on Rumlow’s weight on top of him and inside of him, he’ll scream and if he screams, Rumlow will bring his belt down on his back again so he bites the scream back. Sometimes he hits him with it anyway._

_“You fucking slut,” Brock drawls, and squeezes the back of his neck. “You love this, hm, darlin’? Love being my tight little whore, don’t you?”_

_Bucky squeezes his eyes shut, lets his brain pull him away. There’s still a bloodstain on the seat from the last time he fucked him here, three or four weeks ago, but now it’s nothing more than darkened fabric. He made Bucky look at him while he’d fucked him the last time, punched him in the face because without realizing it, he’d started begging, started mumbling, “please, please, stop, no, stop, stop.” This is better than that. He can close his eyes, he can cry as long as he doesn’t sob loud enough for Brock to hear, he only has to be half undressed, jeans shoved down to his knees and shirt pushed up enough that Bruck can hit his back. This is better, this is better, stop fucking crying, don’t move, just let him do it, it will be over soon, you do this every day, shut up, just fucking let him or he’ll make it worse, so much worse—_

_Bucky stares at the spot. He’s untethered now, his mind somewhere else, some gray area between awake and asleep that he spends a lot of his time in now. Then pain, bursting through him, sickening and blinding, thick, crude lines over his back, and he sobs out loud before he can catch himself._

_“Say it, sweetheart, wanna hear you fucking say what a slut you are for me, say you love it, hm—” But he can’t, he can’t get himself to say anything, let alone that because he hates it, he fucking hates it, would rather die than be touched like this for one moment longer—_

_“Fucking SAY IT, James!” Brock hits him with the belt again and his vision whites out with pain. “You stupid little bitch, giving you everything you fucking need and you won’t even try to make it good for me—”_

Then he isn’t there, he’s in his living room, he’s on the couch with Steve. They must have fallen asleep there, but he doesn’t remember when. Bucky is cradled against his chest, and he’s crying like he always does and Steve is murmuring to him the same way he always does.

“He hurt me—” Bucky is whimpering, gasping, and then Steve pulls away and tilts Bucky’s chin up.

“He hurt you?” Steve says, and frowns. “Or did you like it?”

Everything shudders and freezes and falls, crashing, kaleidoscopic. “What?” Bucky whispers, and his voice is pathetically small.

“Everyone hurt you, huh?” Steve has never sounded like this, mocking and cold and diminishing. “All I’ve done is fucking wait for you, buy you a house and clothes and food and listen to you cry about other guys fucking you while you give me _nothing_. You’re such a fucking slut, Bucky, but not for me, is that right? Not good enough for you? You’d rather spread your legs for middle-aged assholes in alleyways and pretend to be a prude for me?”

“He—they—they hurt me, they raped me, I didn't want—”

“They raped you,” Steve laughs. “Right. I’m fucking tired of waiting, Bucky.” And before he can reply, before he can scream or apologize or plead, Steve flips him on his stomach and he’s doing what Brock did to him before, snarling the same things in his ear—

Then Bucky reels and jerks back again, and he’s still in the living room but it isn’t spinning and it isn’t dripping blood everywhere, a half finished picture of shrapnel and terror, and he isn’t hurting. It’s just dark, and then Bucky thinks maybe he’s back in the car and panic courses roughly through him. It’s all wrong, though, too dark and too quiet, the weight against him careful and steady instead of cruel, and there’s someone talking again.

“Sh,” the voice is saying, a man, but it isn’t Brock because Brock would never speak that gently. “Sh, Buck, it’s okay. It’s alright, baby.” There’s a hand on his back, soft and moving in circles, not coming down to smack the raw, bruised skin, not sliding down between his legs and squeezing until it hurt, and the hand in his hair isn’t tightening and yanking and jerking his head back to thrust into his mouth. Bucky whimpers. 

“It’s okay, baby, it’s just me, it’s Steve.” Steve, _Steve_ , of course, Steve, real Steve, Steve who isn’t going to hit him or rape him or call him a whore. Relief floods him. The nightmare is still there, broken glass catching the light in his brain, puncturing the real world, and he flinches involuntarily when Steve touches his shoulder and the fear is slashed open again, terror cascading through him, and Bucky pulls away, jumps to his feet.

“I don’t want it,” Bucky whimpers; _you love this, hm,_ and _wanna hear you fucking say what a slut you are_ and _little whore who wants everything I give you_ and _asked for it_ and _everyone forced you, huh?_ press in on him, suffocating, squeezing, hurting, and he wants the words gone, wants them burnt away on the inside even if it takes the rest of him with it. “I didn’t want it, I didn’t fucking _want it_ , I don’t want this—” He sinks to his knees. He’s so weak he feels sick, so weak he can’t keep himself up. Unimaginable shame flushes him, hot and vile, and he hates himself as much as he ever has and he isn’t a victim because he didn’t fight back then, not against Pierce or Rumlow or anyone, and he didn’t fight back even now when he’s supposed to be stronger, he isn’t a survivor, isn’t even enough of a human being.

“Bucky, I know, baby, I know, I know,” Steve murmurs, and sinks down next to him. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Buck, everything’s okay. You’re okay.” Steve doesn’t hit him, doesn’t grab his throat and snarl that he’s sick of waiting, doesn’t tell him to stop overreacting. He doesn’t even touch him, and Bucky knows it’s because he isn’t worth being touched, he’s too disgusting, too pathetic.

Bucky whispers “I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry.”

Steve gets up, quickly, and Bucky scrambles back in panic. He’s saying something but Bucky can’t hear him, and then the lamp goes on and Bucky blinks a few times, his vision settling on the warm, vague yellow glow. Penny is right next to him, snuggling close, rubbing against his neck. He pets her, relaxing a little, dread coming undone very slightly. He’s still wired on anxiety, pushed long over the edge by it, but the racing, unbearable panic that makes him think he’s going to split open starts to wane and he just feels repulsed.

“What do you need right now, baby?” Steve asks him, after about an eternity. He’s kneeling by him again, close but not touching him, his hands clasped in front of him. Bucky swallows. Everything feels stiff and dry and wrong, like all of the air was sucked out of the room or like he was cut open and stitched, crudely and haphazardly, back into one piece.

“I don’t—um—I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers again, and the weight of it makes him start crying again. “I’m so sorry.” The Steve in his dream had said _All I’ve done is fucking wait for you, buy you a house and clothes and food and listen to you cry about other guys fucking you while you give me nothing_ , and that’s the truth, only real Steve is too good and selfless and patient to say it. 

“Bucky, sweetheart, you have nothing to be sorry for, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong, baby. Buck, I’m not—I’m not angry, about anything, okay? I love you, you’re okay.”

If Bucky weren’t selfish, he wouldn’t lean into Steve’s arms and sob into his neck. He’d pull it together, and tell Steve they can go up to bed and rub his back as they fall asleep to thank him for being there, and kiss him without freaking out every other time. He is selfish, though, so he clings to Steve and lets himself be held and rocked and kissed lightly on the forehead and spoken to so softly, _it’s okay_ s and _I love you_ s and _I’m right here_ s washing over him until he stops hearing the other things.

Bucky’s mind keeps ricocheting, almost able to grasp onto the recently-trained _it’s not my fault, I don’t owe Steve sex, he loves me and he isn’t going to be angry with me, it’s okay to have moments like this because I went through trauma and this is what happens after that_ , but then slipping back into the easier thoughts, the thoughts that already have their roots in his brain and are settled, indented into his mind, worn from use. He wants to be okay. He wants to be normal.

Bucky shifts his head from where it’s pressed into Steve’s neck and touches his face. His hands are shaking, his soul is shaking, but he kisses him, softly, easing into it, like it will fix everything that’s wrong. It’s wet and messy because he’s still crying, and Steve kisses him back but it’s very, very tentative and slow.

“Buck, I don’t know if it’s the right time—”

“It’s fine,” Bucky hears himself say. “Just… I need a distraction, it’s good, I want this.” He needs to know that he isn’t too repulsive to kiss, he needs to know that Rumlow didn’t suck him dry of everything he’s worked so hard to get back. “Please, Steve, I’m okay. Jus’ need to not think.”

Steve looks worried, but he nods carefully. “Okay, baby. Okay. But… we’re just gonna kiss, alright? We aren’t… it’s not the right time to try anything else.” Bucky nods, not really registering the words. His brain has gone fuzzy, not good or bad, just numb. Steve kisses him again, very gently, pushing his hair back slightly as he does.

It isn’t helping, so Bucky kisses him harder. Steve is keeping them going slow, and Bucky is sick of being fragile, of needing to be handled like he’s breakable and explosive and pathetic. 

He doesn’t realize he’s crying harder until Steve stops, pulling away from the kiss completely. “Bucky, Bucky, it’s alright. We’re alright. I’m sorry, baby. We shouldn’t—that wasn’t a good idea, it wasn’t the right time.”

Bucky recoils, hands pressed over his face. He feels so heavy and small, torn open, his bones replaced with lead, and sewn back up. “I’m so sick of being like this, I don’t want this, I don’t want to be scared—” He hiccups, his voice so small as he cries. “I hate being this way, I hate myself so much, I just wanna be fucking normal—” Steve just holds him and rubs his back as he cries and gasps, “—just wanna… be able to kiss you, give you fucking something, I’m so tired of—of being so fucked up—”

“Oh, baby.” Steve’s voice is so wounded. “Oh, Buck, love. Sh, sh, baby, it’s alright. Breathe, baby—” There’s a glass of water on the coffee table. Steve reaches for it, strategically maneuvering around Bucky, still fitted against his chest, and hands it to him. It’s room temperature now, but Bucky takes a sip, still drawing ragged, miserable breaths. “Gotta breathe, Buck, I don’t want you to get sick, okay?” 

He closes his eyes and nods. Steve rubs patterns over his back while he draws in a few shaky, panicky breaths, eyes closed, shoulders lifting a little with each breath. 

“Buck, you aren’t fucked up. You’re just hurting, baby, it’s okay, you’re okay, so perfect, baby.” Bucky’s head goes limp against his chest, and Steve guides it, gently, to his shoulder, hands steady and careful. “Baby, you’re so wonderful. You… you never have to _give me_ anything, Buck, alright? That’s not… that’s not how it is, sweetheart, right? I’d never, um, expect that, remember?”

There’s still a scream from deep within him that hasn’t let up, brought on by the dreams, piercing and awful and splitting him open. He knows the way he’s thinking is wrong, knows it’s just the trauma and self doubt and years of psychological abuse making him feel this way, but right now, that doesn’t make it any less fucking real. He can’t stop hearing _You’d rather spread your legs for middle-aged assholes in alleyways and pretend to be a prude for me?_

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice is gentle, a little shaky. “Baby? Stay with me, okay? I’m right here, we’re okay, you’re safe, I promise.”

Bucky becomes aware that he’s shaking his head again, breathy, scared whimpers escaping him. “I… fuck…” He presses his face back into Steve’s neck, sobbing, dry and fractured. “He scared… he fucking scared me so much.” Scared isn’t the right word. Brock has rewritten his world, has turned all of his safety and strength and security to fragments, littered weakly around him. 

“I know,” Steve says softly, into his hair. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”

Bucky stays there in his arms, shaking and crying, unraveled by Brock and what he’s done.

***

Steve wakes up earlier than he usually does, but he doesn’t run. He’s exhausted, fatigue that peels away at his bones and doesn’t let him drag himself off of the couch for half an hour after opening his eyes, and more than that, he doesn’t want to leave Bucky here. 

He glances around the kitchen. It’s crystallized in early, early morning light, misty and still, lingering darkness leaving it cast in a light blue fog. When they first moved here, and everything had been stripped bare for them to decorate and alter and reshape into their home, they’d spent a full night trying to assemble their bed, (a job that had gone so badly they ended up calling Scott the next day and asking him to come do it) and, upon realizing that the sun was rising, come down here to the kitchen. It had been earlier that morning, the brief sliver of time that feels sacred and untouched and timeless, light pouring in in broken moonlight. Bucky had looked spun out of starlight in the silvery haze, and he’d looked over at Steve and grinned, pushing up on tiptoes to kiss him, and when Steve kissed him back he thought about the kids who had talked about getting an apartment together with so much hope and excitement and naivety, and he’d hoped they could see it now.

Steve brings his hands up to his face. He doesn’t want Rumlow to have taken that from them, to have yanked the safety out of their home by the roots the way Pierce had. He refuses to believe he already has.

Steve texts Henry and asks if he has any space to meet tomorrow. Then he showers, feeds Penny, double checks the camera footage from the last few days and finds nothing out of the ordinary, and makes breakfast. He’d rather let Bucky sleep, but they’re supposed to be at Jennifer’s at eleven thirty, so he shakes him up sofly.

“Hey, baby,” Steve says gently, hand light on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky stirs and flinches and then pretends he didn’t, rubbing his eyes.

“Hey.” His voice is raspy and thin. “Time is it?”

“It’s like ten,” Steve tells him. “I figure we gotta leave in like forty-five. I made you some eggs and coffee and toast.”

Bucky sits up, leaning clumsily in for a hug. “Thank you,” he whispers. Steve kisses the side of his head and nods. His hands rest on the back of Bucky’s head and just above his waist, gentle and still, holding him steady. 

Normally, they’d take the subway, but they’re running a little late and Bucky is still too freaked out to go back there right now, so they get an Uber. Winter is growing harder, its edges sharpening, mid-November bringing brittleness and bitter chill and a thin layer of frost over everything, and the windows fog up in the car. Bucky leans his head on Steve’s shoulder and holds his hand and bounces his leg.

When they get there, Jennifer comes out to greet them. She’s always a little softer with Bucky when she knows he’s just had a breakdown, careful with her questions, letting him start. “Do you want to start alone?” she asks, before they head in, “Or should Steve come?”

“Steve, um. He can come.”

She nods and smiles, and the three of them—and Penny, sticking close to Bucky’s leg—head in.

Bucky trembles through telling her, pressing into Steve’s side as he does. He tells her the things Brock said and watches Steve’s eyes darken, but his hands are soft and protective on Bucky’s shoulders and it keeps him steady until he’s done. 

Jennifer runs a hand through her hair when he finished, eyes flashing. “You need,” she tells them, “to get a restraining order as soon as possible. After you leave here, if you can.”

Steve nods. Bucky rubs his hands over his face. 

“How are you doing, Bucky?” she asks him gently. “Wherever you are is alright. That was terrifying.”

Bucky rubs his eyes. He’s been doing that a lot lately. “It really scared me.” His voice cracks. “He—oh, god.”

Steve pulls him in, strokes his back while he cries, kisses his hair a few times. Jennifer doesn’t care. Bucky has talked to her about how much comfort he takes in Steve, Steve’s presence, or Steve touching him and holding him, so she knows what it means to him to be allowed to have that here. They used to be so careful in here, sitting on opposite ends of the couch, hands clasped compromisingly in the middle so they didn’t seem codependent or unprofessional or somehow disrespectful. She said to them, a while ago, smiling, _You know, you guys are allowed to hug in here_ , after watching the way they tensed up and pulled apart heading into the office.

“Sorry,” Bucky whispers. Steve makes a soothing, disagreeing noise, and Jennifer shakes her head.

“Don’t apologize,” she says kindly. “This was really, really upsetting, Bucky. Being scared by it is the most normal reaction in the world.” She pauses. “I know this is terrifying. But you’re safe, Bucky. He isn’t going to hurt you like that. You’re going to get a restraining order and then he really won’t be able to touch you. I’m so sorry that you’re going through this right now.”

Bucky says softly, staring down, “I’m so scared.”

Steve squeezes his hand tightly.

“Him…” Bucky begins, and swallows. “Him touching—touching me like that really… fucking… screwed with my head, I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Because he’s a person who’s hurt you,” Jennifer says firmly. “And his presence is a threat to you, it’s a threat to your security. Of course it distressed you.”

“I, um, I can’t… I can’t calm down. I still feel, um. Shaky?” His heart has been ricocheting out of his chest and his voice shakes every time he talks and his head hurts.

“Triggers do that,” Jennifer says, “and this was about as severe of a trigger as you could have.”

“I just—god—” Bucky buries his face in his hand again. “I don’t know, I don’t fucking know.” Steve, as he shivers, rubs his back until he looks up again.

“Steve, you mind giving us the next few minutes?” Jennifer asks him.

“No, ‘course not.” Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand, scratches Penny quickly, and heads out. Bucky knows he needs to talk alone, but Steve’s absence leaves the room a little colder.

Bucky says, very softly, “I had this, um. This dream last night. It wasn’t… it was a nightmare, but it wasn’t how they usually are.” Jennifer waits for him to go on. He swallows, letting his fingers wrap around his wrist and squeezing. “It, um. I had this… flashback-nightmare, kinda, about… about Rumlow.” He closes his eyes, all the bravery sucked out of him. Fucking unbelievable, that their names still do that to him. “About one of the times he… you know.” She doesn’t make him describe it. She just nods, encouraging, understanding. “Then, um, I thought I woke up for a second. ‘Cause I was in the living room lying down with Steve. But. Um. In the dream, he, uh, was, um—” Bucky rubs down his nose; sparks go off, meek flares of panic in his head, leaving him with a dull headache. “He was, um, doing what Brock did to me. And… and saying the same stuff, uh, you know—” He closes his eyes again; red burns behind his eyelids. “—‘you’re such a slut, you liked it’. That stuff. And, um. He said something like ‘you’ll spread your legs for all of them but you won’t give me anything.’”

She nods, like it isn’t an appalling thing to say. “That sounds awful.”

Bucky swallows; his throat is dry. “Yeah, uh, I was freaked out when I woke up. It took me a minute to, um, realize what was actually happening.” Bucky rubs his hands together. “What, uh, do you make of it?”

“Well,” Jennifer says carefully, leaning forward, “have you been feeling lately like you should somehow be ‘giving’ Steve sex?”

The question lodges something metal into Bucky’s chest. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “That guy at the wedding, and Brock, and now this, um. I don’t know if… it’s just worse than it has been, feeling that way. And, um, feeling like… like that’s all I’m good for.” He stares at his hands.

“Have you been able to break that cycle of thinking?” Jennifer asks firmly. He shrugs. “Bucky, you know that’s not the truth. What helps to tell yourself when you start to think that way?”

Bucky bites his lip. “I know it’s not true,” he says slowly. She nods, wanting him to go on. He sighs. “I know Steve loves me, and my friends love me, and the, um… it’s not true, that I’m only worth anything when I’m giving someone sex.” He shivers. It helps a little to say, ripping off a bandaid or a fever finally breaking; still painful, still uncomfortable, but the beginning of relief. 

“Right.” She pauses. “Did you tell Steve about the dream?” Bucky shakes his head. “Why not?”

“‘Cause it felt—I don’t know. Whatever prompted that dream wasn’t him, you know? He would’ve just felt guilty about something that a non-existent version of him did.”

Jennifer considers this. “What you tell Steve is up to you,” she says finally, “but I think, for both of you, talking over these feelings is important. Especially as your relationship progresses.”

She’s talking about the fact that over the last few months he’s been in here, and in Henry’s office, talking through sex with Steve and the ways they could someday make it work. They’ve both been tested; Bucky used to go to the free clinics whenever some guy decided he didn’t want a condom. It wasn’t many; most of them assumed he had something already so they didn’t risk it. Those were the good ones, the ones who saw him as just a vessel they could use to get off, the space where a person could be but wasn’t, who wanted to fuck him but were disgusted to think of him as anything other than, well, a glorified sex toy, who used him to jerk themselves off and didn’t need to hit him or scream at him or make him beg. He got lucky with the ones who refused, he guesses, if you could call it lucky. Pierce didn’t use one. Pierce told him _If you’re going to act like a pathetic little bitch in heat, you’re going to get fucked like one._ Brock didn’t. Rollins didn’t. Steve knew that, and Steve didn’t think he was disgusting. He and Steve haven’t gotten close yet, not really, but they’re working on it, the way they were working on everything, slow and careful and purposeful before Brock blew up the progress they made with a note and a text and words and hands that pulled Bucky apart piece by piece. 

“We’ve been doing so good,” Bucky whispers, “and I just… they controlled everything about my life for so long. I _can’t_ —not anymore—” His voice cracks. He wishes Steve were still in there with him. He wishes he weren’t too pathetic to get through a sentence on his own.

“Bucky, they don’t control you anymore.” She’s firm, the way she always is when she needs to convince him of something, planting her words purposefully, rooted and permanent as an oak tree, daring anyone to challenge her. “This is scary and unfair and awful, but it’s not everything. The fear and anxiety and stress that you’re feeling right now is a response to something hard happening to you, not you being back in a situation where you’re unsafe or being abused, alright?”

Bucky nods absently. “I don’t—I thought I was better.”

“You’re doing really well,” she counters. “Recovering is a long process, and it’s back and forth. You aren’t back at square one because you’re struggling right now.”

Struggling is a nice way of putting it. Bucky feels like he’s being throttled, terror folding in on him from every direction. “Am I just too fucked up?” he whispers, and looks at his hands. “Did I, um—maybe I’m just not normal. Have you ever thought that?” His voice is small. He’s wondered this, recently. To be doing so well and have it shatter—worse than shatter, have it dissolve to dust, swept away like it was never there—that can’t be normal.

Jennifer shakes her head. “Absolutely not. Every trauma survivor I’ve ever worked with has had periods where they’ve been uphill and had periods where symptoms come back worse than usual. You’re doing so well, Bucky. Even the way you’ve been talking in here for the last few weeks tells me how well you’re handling distressing events. Think about where you were when I first started seeing you. The difference in how you’re discussing and handling really upsetting events and feelings is outstanding.”

It doesn’t feel it.

“We’re going to get this sorted out. It’s all gonna be fine, Bucky. He isn’t going to hurt you again,” she adds. Bucky swallows, suddenly very cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so so much love to all of you for reading, buckle up we've got quite a ride coming
> 
> jessemovie on tumblr because 2 WEEKS to the breaking bad movie sjhfdksjafh
> 
> see u probably next week


	10. ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings for attempted assault and people being shitty to bucky......it's described in the end notes if you need details x

They call Carol immediately after that. “We have a Brock Rumlow problem,” Steve tells her, through gritted teeth.

“That son of a bitch,” Carol answers, with a sharp inhale. “Okay. You guys wanna come over for dinner tonight? You can tell me what happened then? Right now I’m about to interrogate some asshole.”

So they agree. “Now what?” Bucky asks when she hangs up, and chokes out a laugh, even though it all couldn’t be further from being funny.

Steve pulls him close against his side, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I think,” he says after a moment, “that now, we go see a bad movie and gorge out on popcorn and soda and snowcaps.”

Bucky smiles, exhausted and anxious, but undeniably a smile.

They go to a diner, then see some romance-time travel movie that’s cute enough to distract them for a few hours. 

“Are you that couple from that big trial last summer?” A woman next to them asks, before it starts.

Steve, with uncharacteristic hostility, replies, “Yeah, and we were hoping that you would bring that up so we could talk to you about it while we’re trying to watch _About Time_.”

Bucky snorts. She moves seats after that.

They head over to Carroll Gardens afterwards. Carol and Maria’s feels, insanely, like what Steve imagines returning home from college or travel or war to a family that wants you there must be like. Carol throws the door open for them, Monica propped up on her hip, and smiles so warmly that Steve startles remembering that a few months ago, she’d pointed a gun at Alexander Pierce and snarled at him to get down.

“Bucky and Steve and Penny are here!” Monica giggles. 

“Yes they are!” Carol gives them each a quick hug. Maria shoves a plate of homemade mac and cheese in front of each of them, which they gratefully accept. Henry said recently that Steve doesn’t let himself get taken care of enough, that growing up too fast in too-short a timespan sucked him dry of his ability to accept help.

_You’re twenty-three. Most kids your age lean on other people for almost everything, and they don’t have nearly as much on their plate as you do. I think it’s worth acknowledging that the way your family treated you warped your ability to accept care from people who want to care for you, maybe in parental roles, maybe not._

Once Henry had pointed out that some of the adults ( _real adults_ , he said, smiling, _thirties, at least._ ) in Steve’s life had taken on parental roles, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. Tony, showing up at his apartment all those years ago when he was drunk and miserable, telling him to pull it together then patting his shoulder while he cried over Bucky and the colossal disaster he had made of his life, still calling him two or three times a week to check on him and Bucky. Carol and Maria, cooking them dinner and letting them talk and always giving them advice. Even Scott, showing up a few weeks ago to fix a computer issue for Steve, then staying to make them dinner and doing their dishes after they fell asleep and, upon leaving, setting the alarm system for them without needing to be reminded.

Maybe it’s more mentorship. Maybe it’s just that his parents fucked him up too much for him to ever know. Still, right now, Steve feels the aching need for someone older and smarter and calmer to tell them what to do.

They eat (more than one plate, because Maria can really cook), and let Monica show them her drawings (“This one is of Penny,” she says, gesturing to a blue and purple scribble, and Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand with fondness), until Carol scoops her up and kisses her cheek and tells her it’s bedtime. She goes with some whining, but she’s out in ten minutes while Bucky and Steve help finish the dishes, and Carol returns looking serious.

“Hey,” she says gently, touching Steve’s shoulder quickly as she returns. “You guys wanna move to the living room to talk?”

So they do. Bucky leans against Steve, held close against his chest on the couch, fingers woven tightly together. Steve tells them what happened; Bucky’s already had to relive it twice.

They’re both quiet. “Jesus Christ,” Maria says finally. “That absolute fucking scumbag.”

Carol looks thrown by it too, eyes wide. Cast in the light of their fireplace, their expressions; Maria and Carol’s absolute shock, Bucky’s quiet, terrified misery look painted, stills from a horror movie, the moment right before a jumpscare sends darkness crashing over everyone and screams fill the world. It sets Steve on edge.

Carol says, finally, “Tomorrow, come into the precinct, and make a report. I’ll arrest him—”

“No,” Bucky whispers, and everyone turns towards him. “That won’t work,” he says flatly. “You can’t… we’ve got no evidence. Even if you arrested him, he—you couldn’t keep him, you couldn’t charge him with anything.”

Carol runs a hand through her hair. “There isn’t… a lot, no. But Bucky, he’s _stalking_ you. That’s a crime.”

“But there’s nothing that says he is,” Bucky whispers. He looks weighed down with resignation, his entire body sagging under it. Steve gives him a quick squeeze. 

Carol sighs. “Okay,” she says finally, “then tomorrow, you guys need to go file for a restraining order. Fury and I can serve it to him this week. It should get sorted out in a couple of weeks.”

A log caves into the fire, sending sparks up with a dying gasp before they go dark again. “And you think a judge will sign that?” Steve asks her.

Carol bites her lip. “Yeah,” she says, a moment late. “I think the odds are good. It’s not guaranteed, but at this point, it’s worth the risk.” She bites her lip. “The lack of evidence is a problem—”

Maria, suddenly, squeezes Carol’s hand. “What did he say when he testified?”

The question catches them all off guard. Carol, raising her eyebrows, deferring to Steve and Bucky.

“A whole lot of fucking lies,” Steve says darkly. 

Maria shakes her head. “I know, but was there anything like a confession? Anything that you could have played at a restraining order hearing that a judge will see as proof that he’s a threat.”

Bucky looks up, a small, hopeful spark of adrenaline in the motion. “He, uh, he… Maria Hill kind of got something from him, in the end.” 

“That’s right.” Steve has sat up, his voice going sharp with focus. “She said something, she accused him of something, and he said ‘I don’t remember.’ He was pissed.”

Carol purses her lips. “Okay. Then you need to get the recording of that bit of the court case. Do you guys have a lawyer?”

Blank looks from both of them. “I have one for career stuff,” Steve says, after a moment.

“Okay, well. Hire one for this. You don’t want to represent yourselves, especially if he uses Zola.” Something flickers across Carol’s face, but it’s gone before Steve can study it. 

“Pepper’s a lawyer,” Bucky says absently, to Steve. “Maybe her.” His hands are shaking, and his chest hitches with a sob. Steve knows he’s thinking about the last time they were in a courthouse, the stale, boxed in, compacted terror, neatened into rotted words of testimonies that lashed over his soul and opened raw, poisonous wounds. A knot slips around Steve’s heart. He doesn’t want Bucky to ever go through this again. He knows as much as anyone that life isn’t fair, but the relentless cruelty of the world towards Bucky, of all people, is wrong in a way that transcends logic or fate or order.

“This is going to be fine,” Maria says to them, voice lulling and sure. “It’ll be sorted out before you know it. And in the meantime, we’re here for you.”

***

The filing isn’t the hard part.

They get it done in a courtroom in Downtown Brooklyn in half an hour, signed in front of the court clerk and given a court date for two weeks from the day. It’s not especially stressful, but they get to the front steps and Bucky bursts into tears.

“I know, baby,” Steve murmurs, holding him, fingers pulling lightly through his hair as he cries into his neck. “It’s gonna be okay, everything’s gonna be okay.”

***

Three days later, the world explodes.

Bucky is with Penny, on his way home from class with Wanda. Sometimes, they’ll get lunch, but she’s working today so he’s going back to Steve. It’s cold but not freezing, weather that leaves New York looking bare, strangely preserved in the stillness winter fatigue.

 _almost home❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️_ , he texts Steve from the subway, when he’s pulling into their stop. He shivers automatically getting off of the train and chalks it up to paranoia and stress from the last time he was here, making him bite down on his lip and walk faster.

 **:) counting the seconds** , Steve answers. 

_obsessed much?_

**always with you** Then, a minute later, **meet you by the subway and we can get lunch?**

 _of course :)_. Bucky relaxes when he gets above ground, leaning against the wall to wait.

**yay**

**I love you!!!!!**

**Sam and nat popped by theyre gonna come**

**Also I’m grabbing coffee and I’m getting you your disgusting pumpkin latte :/**

Bucky is typing back _have fun with your boring coffee_ , when Penny jumps and growls. Bucky startles, looking up, and then shrinks, stumbling back as much as he can, a scream catching in his throat and flaking away, something trapped in the wisp of a spiderweb, everything in him becoming stuck with fear.

“Get your fucking dog to sit,” Brock snaps. He rears back like he’s going to kick her, and Bucky’s bones go brittle with terror.

“Penny, sit,” he manages. She does, but she stays up and alert, ears flattened back, eyes on Brock.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” Brock says calmly, stepping in and smiling. “Hey, sweetheart.” Bucky closes his eyes. Brock strokes a hand down his cheek, pinching at his skin. “You used to be thinner,” he comments nonchalantly, clicking his tongue, disappointed that Bucky isn’t starving within a few weeks of his life anymore. “Still pretty, though, aren’t you? Pretty mouth. Bet you can still do some good with it.”

Bucky stays still, swallowing the sobs and whimpers of terror that shudder through him, falling flat in his throat, because if Penny gets another signal that he’s afraid, she'll act on it, and he doesn’t know what Brock will do then. He can’t help the trembling. She’s already up again, trying to push her way back in between them because she knows he’s scared, but Brock’s body is hard and immovable, a weapon rooted into the ground, and he doesn’t step aside.

Penny jumps towards him, throwing her weight against his legs, growling, frantically. Brock jumps, but holds his ground, glaring at her. _Former cop,_ Bucky thinks hysterically, _He knows German Shepherds._

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Brock sets his jaw, rolling his eyes like he couldn’t be more inconvenienced. “Alright.” He smirks at Bucky. “Tie it up on the fence.”

“No,” Bucky whispers, with a small, quivering, punched in breath.

“Fine,” Brock snaps, and raises his foot again. Panicked, Bucky pulls her back, still planted firmly between them. “I won’t touch it if you get rid of it right now.”

Hands trembling, Bucky hooks the loop of her leash over the spike of someone’s front gate. She tugs uselessly at it, whining, barking, and Bucky whispers, “Pen, it’s okay, s-sit.”

She doesn’t sit.

Brock rolls his eyes again and grabs Bucky by the arm, dragging him far enough away that she can’t touch either of them, shoving him roughly against the wall. Breath catches in Bucky’s throat and trembles there.

“That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” Brock says. He grabs Bucky roughly by the jaw, hands cold and hard, fingers lead-heavy. 

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut. “Why are you—you doing this?” Bucky’s voice shakes uncontrollably, the aftermath of an explosion, rocks pulled through a current. 

Brock laughs and kicks his feet further apart. “I bet you no one notices if you’re busy for a few hours, huh? Aren’t you supposed to be with your pretty little friend right now, anyway? Steve won’t know the difference, will he?”

You don’t get used to it, being terrified like this. Bucky wishes he did.

“You—you can’t do this,” Bucky whispers. “Restraining order, you c-can’t—”

Brock laughs. “Right. No judge’s gonna believe you, you know. You got lucky with Pierce, but you think anyone is gonna listen to some slut claiming he got raped twice? Everyone knows you asked for it.”

Bucky spits back, “Everyone—everyone knows you almost killed your pregnant wife. I bet that gets a judge’s attention.” He shudders at the effort it takes.

Rumlow scowls. Bucky flinches and cowers; he thinks, at first, Brock is going to hit him. Instead, he grabs Bucky’s wrist and squeezes so his nails dig through his sleeve, hard enough that it will bruise later, hard enough that Bucky whimpers, all of the defiance shattering weakly.

“You stupid little bitch,” Rumlow hisses, “you’re _nothing_. You know that, right? Worthless little whore. Need someone to fucking control you, can’t remember your goddamn place.”

“Stop,” Bucky whispers.

Brock leans in, and sucks at his neck. Panic flushes Bucky, terror that’s more automatic at the touch then a reaction to what’s happening, and with his free hand, Bucky slaps him in the face.

Brock rears back, stunned. Then his face contorts into a sneer, somewhere between amusement and hate, and he lifts his hand and hits Bucky back, hard enough that he collapses into the wall, head snapping to the side, pain sending the world into hot, jagged flashes of red that carve away at him. Bucky chokes out something, a gasp or a sob or both, something miserable that edges Brock on; he pushes Bucky hard against the wall, pinning one hand to his chest and his shoulder with the other.

From a million miles away, Bucky can hear Penny going insane, barking so loudly it shatters the wall Brock has thrown up between him and the rest of the world. He wonders, vaguely, how no one has come running out of their house to check what’s happening, but it’s the middle of a weekday and no one’s home. He sobs quietly.

“When did you become such a prude?” He mocks, breath hot on Bucky’s ear. Then he drags his lips and teeth over Bucky’s neck again, wet and disgusting and painful, sucking at it the way he might ravish a piece of meat, ignoring Bucky desperately whimpering _Stop, stop, STOP—_

As quickly as it started, it’s over. There’s a flash of color and saturated, ragged noises that Bucky can’t place but after a moment, his wrist is free and Brock’s hand is gone from his cheek and he’s on his knees and Penny is close to him, licking him worriedly. Bucky blinks thickly, every nerve still shooting pain and terror through him, the spillover from what’s happened, electrifying him in panic.

There’s a hand on his shoulder; he jerks away, and the hand pulls back. “Bucky, hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s Sam.” Bucky blinks again. “Bucky, look at me.” He does. “Are you alright? He hurt you?” Bucky makes himself shake his head, even though that isn’t quite true. “Oh, god, Bucky, your neck—” Sam gasps, and kneels next to him. He clamps a hand over it immediately, tears pushing past his eyes and spilling over, mutely shaking his head back and forth until it feels like it’s being dragged out of him. “It’s alright, Buck, you’re okay,” Sam says, soothing, “Can I touch your shoulder?”

Bucky realizes, several moments late, that Brock dropped him because Steve pulled him off and punched. He realizes this because right now, Steve is standing over Brock, screaming something that he doesn’t have the ability to grasp onto and process yet, sound still swelling and waning, screeching tire tracks or the shuddering echoes of a gunshot or Brock saying _worthless little whore_.

He must nod at Sam, because he places a gentle hand against his shoulder, trying to ground him.

Steve gets one hand around his throat, hauling him to his feet and pinning him to the wall sideways. Natasha gets his arms twisted behind his back so he can’t aim for Steve; Bucky forgets sometimes that she can fight, but he remembers, briefly and shakily, that in high school a guy had once grabbed her ass on the street and she’d snapped his wrist before he or Steve could do a thing. He almost laughs remembering it, but it becomes a sob. Brock looks nothing like himself, restrained and bleeding and clearly in pain. Save for the spitting, hideous rage. That’s familiar.

“I will snap your spine, you fucking pervert,” Steve snarls, so detestful that it startles Bucky, hateful in a way he’s only heard the once from Steve, “if we ever hear from you again. I swear to god you won’t know what’s happened.”

Rumlow laughs, grotesque and garbled by blood. “He fight all your battles, _Bucky_?” he sneers, turning his head. 

Bucky flinches. 

Steve jerks Brock forward and back so his head smacks against the brick. “Don’t fucking look at him!” Steve snaps, through Rumlow’s shocked snarl of pain. “You understand me? You come back here, I’ll make your life a nightmare.”

“Understood, sparky,” Rumlow replies, with as much of a smirk as he can manage when his face has just been punched in. “I wouldn’t want him getting on his knees for anyone else if I were you either.”

Steve punches him again.

This time, Rumlow doubles over with a howl of pain and anger, all the hardness and viciousness of his body caving in on itself. Sam lets go of Bucky’s shoulder and throws himself between them, alarmed. Nat drops Brock’s arms and gets to Bucky, throws an arm over his shoulder.

“That upset you, Steve?” Rumlow goes on, enjoying it. “Don’t like to think that your boy used to let me fuck him for —what was it, James? Fifty?” A cold, razor-sharp wail of dread and terror claws through Bucky, splitting him open. He shrinks back. “Awful lot of trouble for a half-decent fuck, he gave me, your pal, your buddy, your _Bucky_. Maybe I loosened him up for you.” He pauses. “I think he might’ve said your name once. That sound right, Bucky? Taught him a lesson, though—”

“You piece of _shit_ —” Steve growls, almost crazed with hatred, surging towards him again. Sam stops him, getting both hands on his shoulders and planting himself there firmly as Steve screams over his shoulder at Brock.

“Steve,” Sam says quietly, urgently. “Steve, enough. He’s trying to get a rise. You’re gonna make things worse. Don’t get yourself in trouble for this son of a bitch. You made your point.”

Steve ignores him. “I should’ve torn your fucking limbs off in that courtroom,” he spits.

Rumlow laughs. “Listen to your friend, _Steve_ , can’t be going to jail and leaving James here on the street again, can you—”

“Shut the hell up, man!” Sam snaps, turning around. “Did you hear him? Come back here and I’m not gonna stop him from breaking your neck again.”

Rumlow glowers at him; the blood dripping down his mouth makes it more treacherous. He runs a hand over his lips, spits viley on the ground, and turns to Bucky. He flinches, and Natasha tightens her arms around him. 

“I’ll see you at the hearing, princess,” Rumlow finally says, and grins. Bucky closes his eyes.

“You _fucking asshole_!” Steve shouts, and launches himself forward again, but Sam has a grip on him and Steve doesn’t get past him. “You piece of _shit_ , don’t you _dare_ talk to him like that—”

Brock looks only delighted by the response. It makes Bucky shudder, a flinch that reaches his soul and leaves his body taut and stiffened.

“Steve,” Sam says, very quietly. Then he leans in, and murmurs something that Bucky doesn’t catch, and whatever he says makes Steve’s muscles uncoil by a fraction so Sam isn’t holding him back quite so firmly. He’s still gasping, labored, enraged breaths that make his shoulders shake, eyes on Brock and full of hate that splinters, falls and lays around them in shrapnel.

Sam eases down a little, arms going limp with relief.

“Get out of here,” Steve spits. “I swear to god, Rumlow, if we ever see you again you’ll regret it.”

Brock staggers a little, wincing. Then he chokes out a dry, cruel laugh and turns into the subway, vanishing down the stairs. When he’s gone, Bucky slumps forward, wrapping one arm around his stomach, a sob breaking in his throat.

“Buck,” Steve murmurs. His voice has gone back to sounding like _Steve_ , gentle and soft and worried as he sinks to his kneels next to Bucky, not touching him. “Bucky, baby, did he hurt you?”

It occurs to Bucky that he’s still covering his neck, hand pressed there with the urgency of obstructing a fatal stab wound. He doesn’t want Steve to see it, doesn’t want Rumlow to have _marked_ him, branded; _so everyone can see what a slut you are for me, huh, James? Stop whining, don’t pretend you don’t love every bit of this._

“Buck.” Steve’s voice quivers, the word tattered. “Baby, it’s okay, I’m right here.” Steve, gently, takes his hand and pulls it away. “I just wanna make sure you’re alright, baby, what’d he do?” He sounds so scared. Bucky realizes he might actually think there’s some kind of cut on his neck, blood welling behind his hand.

Bucky’s hands go limp; he lets Steve pull them away, his fingers light on his wrists. Bucky lets out a small, helpless gasp of pain when he touches the spot on his skin that Rumlow had squeezed, and Steve immediately pulls his hand back. Pale red marks dot it, harsh against his skin, sickening, like the first signs of some awful disease. He pulls up his sleeves so Steve doesn’t have to see it yet, but his neck is exposed, cold air making it hurt more somehow, dull, lingering pain that he doesn’t quite feel flickering through it.

Shame spills over in his chest, covers all of him. He can’t see the mark but he knows it must be bad, broken blood vessels, a welt stamped on him, the way Brock had done it before; _can’t forget who you belong to now, hm_? It’s up high on his neck, too high to hide, and he realizes he’s shaking because he isn’t Brock’s, he doesn’t fucking want to be Brock’s but people will see, Steve will see and they’ll know he’s a slut and they’ll know he didn’t fight it enough.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whimpers as Steve stares at it, the lines on his face pulling tight and hard.

“No, baby, no, you don’t have to be sorry,” Steve chokes out. “Oh, Jesus Christ, Buck.” He looks anguished. “Oh, god, Buck, I’m so sorry.”

It doesn’t make sense that Steve is there like that, speaking gently, not when Bucky’s allowed this to happen. He doubles over in a sob. 

Natasha is on the phone, her voice shaking. “My friend… my friend was just assaulted, um, by someone who… who used to abuse him. We need police—”

Bucky flinches. He doesn’t have the energy to tell her the endless list of reasons it’s a terrible idea. Steve and Sam look unsure, but neither of them stop her. She gives them Bucky and Steve’s address, then says, “Yeah, yes, thank you,” and hangs up.

It takes some coaxing and waiting, but Bucky lets Steve pull him into a hug after some time. He feels diminished, shrunken with fear, his weight against Steve’s chest nothing. Steve’s knuckles burn, a satisfying kind of pain. He closes his eyes and realizes he’s crying, tears spilling into Bucky’s hair, and he brushes them away.

“Hey, love,” he whispers, keeping his voice steady. “Let’s go home, baby.”

Bucky nods, quiet and stunned. With a start, Steve realizes his cheek is swelling, a rough red mark smeared carelessly over his skin.

Brock hit him.

Anger swells in Steve’s chest again, clamping down on his lungs and trapping the air there. He closes his eyes, vision washed in red, suddenly, and purple, the dark, grotesque color that Brock sucked into Bucky’s neck, and he feels momentarily sick. He opens his eyes and looks at his hands, Rumlow’s blood still spattered there, and he wants more of it.

“St-Steve?” Bucky whispers, meek and petrified. “Steve I’m—I’m so-sorry, I didn’t mean—I didn’t—didn’t want—”

The anger filters out as quickly as it came, a heaviness taking shape where it had been, grief and guilt and sorrow. “Baby,” he says softly, “Bucky, I know. I know, my love. I’m not mad at you, I promise. You did nothing wrong, baby, absolutely nothing.”

Bucky’s shoulders slump with relief. He lets Steve help him up and leans against him, warm and close, body quivering.

They live so close to the subway that it’s barely a walk, but it still feels somehow eternal. Everything is still and settled, exactly the same as it had been when they’d left this morning, but something tentative and fragile has been thrown over everything, a quiver in the air, a hum of something low and threatening. Steve grits his teeth to make it stop.

Sam and Natasha stay with them, steady, worried presences in the background. They don’t expect anything, just stay, quiet and comforting, a gentle hand on Steve’s or Bucky’s shoulder occasionally.

Bucky hasn’t let go of Steve since he let him put his arms around him, and there’s no way Steve is going to pull away. He guides him, gently, to the couch, letting him slump against his shoulder, holding him and soothing him and whispering to him while Sam gets him some Aspirin and water and a sweatshirt. Natasha dabs at the worst of the blood on Steve’s knuckles; it stings, and she gives up once she realizes he’s not going to let go of Bucky long enough to clean it properly.

“Baby,” Steve asks him finally, tucking his hair back gently. “Baby, what happened?”

Bucky shivers, choking on gaspy, whimpery little sobs that make him sound young. Grief slams Steve, grief with a hardened edge to it, grief that corkscrews harshly through his chest until he tastes metal.

“He… um. He—he—he followed me. He cornered me, um—I—he told me to—to tie up Penny.” Bucky sobs brokenly. Steve squeezes him closer. “He was—he was gonna hurt her, so I did.” Cold disgust washes over Steve, jolting him. “He grabbed me a bit. My, um, my wrist, really hard. My neck. He—he touched me.” Bucky’s face screws up in pain, so heavy it could drag him underwater. “Kissed my neck. He said… He said stuff.” He breaks into sobbing again. Steve hugs him until he’s almost on his lap, held as gently and fiercely as he can manage.

“I’m so sorry,” Steve says, voice cracking, “baby, baby, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, god.”

“I don’t wanna talk to the police,” Bucky whispers, panicky. “Steve, I—they aren’t gonna— I can’t—”

“Baby.” Steve squeezes his hands. “Baby, they… Buck, he assaulted you. They can arrest him—”

“They _won’t_ ,” Bucky snaps, and then crumbles into sobbing again. Steve’s heart collapses.

“Bucky, he hurt you.” Steve is whispering, now, so only Bucky can hear. “Baby, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, you know that, love. But… but I think you should report this. It’s a crime.”

Bucky’s voice is so, so small when he whispers, “If I do can you… Can you stay with me?”

A shot of pain thrums through Steve. “Of course, Buck. Of course.”

The cops get there after an hour. Steve texts Carol _rumlow went after buck again. We’re home its really bad_. Bucky is on the couch with Steve, fitted small against his side, Penny leaning against him. Steve is rubbing his back while he drinks a cup of tea. He hasn’t said much, just trembled, quiet and shell-shocked, eyes glassy. The mark on his cheek has swelled, red and harsh and brutal, and it makes Steve clench his jaw. He winces at the doorbell; Natasha goes for it with a worried look.

Bucky shudders a little, pressing his face into Steve’s neck. Steve kisses his hair, throwing an arm over his shoulders as he straightens up, unfolding his legs from the couch and rubbing a hand down his face.

The two cops they send are both just past middle age, tall white guys with steel faces who might have been indistinguishable from one another if it weren’t for a few key features; the guy in front is a little taller and thinner, coiled more tightly, his hair combed over, all of his features overshadowed by an obnoxious moustache. 

“Officer Thaddeus Ross,” the guy says, with an aura of importance that one might use introducing the president. “My partner, Officer Adrian Toomes.” He gestures to the other guy and sticks a hand out; Steve takes it, then Bucky. He watches them for a moment, recognition clouding his gaze, then smiles, a little coldly. “Didn’t realize it was you two,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Well. Mr. Barnes, I suppose you’re the friend who was assaulted?”

Steve doesn’t like the way he says it; flippant, almost amused. Bucky tenses; Steve tightens his arm around him.

“Yeah,” Bucky says quietly.

Ross throws himself down on the chair opposite them; Toomes takes the one beside him. “Alexander Pierce?” he asks, with a slight smirk.

Steve opens his mouth, probably to say something like _are you fucking kidding me?_ Beside him, Nat squeezes down on his arm to warn him. She’s pursing her lips, eyes wide.

Bucky looks down, making himself smaller.

“Alright,” Toomes says, with a shake of his head at Ross. “Tell us what happened. Do you know the person who assaulted you?” Ross flips his notebook open importantly.

Bucky nods, leaning closer to Steve. He rubs his shoulder. “Yeah,” he says softly. “His name’s Brock Rumlow.”

That gets them both to look up. “Brock?” Ross says, head cocked.

Steve’s chest goes tight. Ross and Toomes exchange a glance.

In hindsight, they should have pulled the plug there. Any chance there had been of Ross being decent at his job was eviscerated the moment it became clear he was a pal of Brock’s in any capacity. All four of them, though, are a little too stunned by it to react fast enough. 

Instead, Steve bites his tongue as Ross leans skeptically in and says, “What are you claiming happened, Mr. Barnes?”

Pulling at his sleeves, Bucky answers, not looking at them, “He, um. He’s been… he’s been following us, recently. He—he cornered me, and, um, threatened me. And then he grabbed my wrist and, and um—” He winces, eyes shut. “He, um, kissed my neck.”

“Did you try to stop this?” Ross asks cooly. Curling his arms around himself, Bucky nods. “How?”

“I told him to,” Bucky whispers. “And then I slapped him, and he—he hit me back.”

“And then you stopped fighting back?” Ross replies, examining his nails. Bucky goes rigid against Steve. On his other side, Nat squeezes down so hard her nails pinch his arm.

“Are you kidding me?” Steve snaps, unable to bite his tongue any longer. Ross turns to him, blinking like he’d forgotten Steve was there, regarding him like a mildly entertaining distraction.

“Excuse me, Mr. Rogers?” 

Steve throws his shoulders back. He doesn’t care if Ross is a cop, he _doesn’t care_ who he is, because anyone speaking to Bucky like that sets off some writhing, impossible protection in him that makes any fear futile. Ross assesses him coldly.

“Watch your tone, Rogers,” he says, with a smile that highlights the hardness in his eyes. Steve glares at him, fingers coiled into fists; Bucky, gently, slips his hand into Steve’s and squeezes until he backs down. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Ross.

“What do you mean he’s been following you?” Toomes says, eyebrows raised.

Bucky’s breathing has become panicked, so Steve squeezes his hand and says “Showing up places where we’ve been. Sending letters. Texting Bucky.” The exhausting anger shudders through him again.

“Did you report this?” Ross asks them, frowning, regarding them as a slight aggravation, an inconvenience in his otherwise impossibly important day.

“We filed for a restraining order,” Bucky says softly. His voice shakes.

“Well, was it granted?”

“The hearing hasn’t happened yet.” Steve practically spits it, voice dripping with hate.

“And you weren’t granted an emergency temporary restraining order?” He’s growing impatient, like he can’t believe his time is being wasted on this.

“No,” Bucky says quietly. His leg is bouncing relentlessly.

Ross turns to Steve, gauging his knuckles. Then he raises an eyebrow.

“How many times did you punch him, Mr. Rogers?”

“Twice,” Steve says, through gritted teeth. “In self defense.”

“Self defense? So he went after you?”

Steve takes a hard breath. Bucky squeezes his hand, and he manages, “In retaliation, then. He was threatening my boyfriend.”

“Walk me through that.” Ross raises an eyebrow. “You come upon a guy harassing your… boyfriend. You pull him off and punch him two times?”

Steve says, not breaking his gaze, “Yeah.”

“And then you all let him leave?” Ross takes his time looking over all four of them. “None of you thought to keep him there until the police got here?”

Natasha says hotly, “He had just attacked our friend. It wasn’t the first thing on any of our minds.”

“You have four witnesses telling you what happened,” Sam adds sharply. “And physical evidence. Is that not enough?”

Ross says evenly, “I have four close friends telling me a story. I’m going to look into every possible situation here, Mr…”

“Wilson.”

“Mr. Wilson.” Ross smiles condescendingly. He observes all of them, pulling the silence taut with his smirk.

“Rumlow was in prison for abusing his wife,” Steve almost snarls. “Is that not a convincing factor here?”

Ross holds his gaze. “Brock got out.”

Bucky rears back like he’s been hit, helplessness filling his expression, and Steve pulls, impossibly, closer to him. The doorbell rings, sharp and urgent. Bucky flinches. Sam jumps up for it.

Ross eyeballs him, then says, “Look, are you sure this was him? Seems unlikely that a guy fresh out of jail would suddenly go after a former…” he smirks, lets it hang in the air. Then he says, callously, “Mr. Barnes, did he rape you or not? Because I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do here, without any proof of an attack.”

Bucky closes his eyes, lowering his head.

“What the fuck,” Steve snarls, beyond respect, beyond worrying about consequences. “Is that how you talk to everyone who tries to report assault?”

“Seriously?” Natasha adds, dropping Steve’s arm, her voice sharp. “Do your goddamn job.”

Ross barks out a laugh. “My job, sweetheart, is to figure out what’s going on here. Is that not a relevant question?”

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Sam snaps. He’s leaning, instinctively and protectively, forward so that he’s half-shielding Bucky.

Toomes says, with a forced calmness like he’s suppressing an eye roll, “Are you alleging that Brock Rumlow raped you before, Mr. Barnes? Or today? Or both.”

Bucky’s voice shakes, but he doesn’t stammer when he says, “He raped me before. He… I think he wanted to today.” Steve squeezes his hand.

Bucky is brave, impossibly brave, bravery shining from all of him, bravery that shatters Steve’s heart because he shouldn’t have to be, not like this. 

“He raped you before,” Ross repeats, the way he might discuss buying a new car at a dinner party. “And before, just to clarify, is when you were a prostitute, correct?”

Bucky flinches. Natasha and Sam sit up sharply.

“So you see, Bucky,” Ross goes on, “why we’re inclined to ask a few questions here.”

Bucky recoils, eyes down, suddenly pale.

Steve jumps to his feet. “Leave,” he snarls. “Right now.”

Ross stays sitting, eyebrows raised, smirking. “I have a few more questions, Rogers,” he says, “why don’t you have a seat?”

Steve is about to say something incredibly hotheaded and stupid when Carol and Fury barrel in, trailed by Sam. Carol looks worried; she takes in the scene in the living room, then blinks, surprised.

Ross blinks right back. “Danvers?”

“Ross,” she says coldly. “We’ll take over from here.”

He looks affronted. “Absolutely not. This is my case—”

“Well, we outrank you.” Carol smiles tightly. “So hop along. Go find some poor rookie in your precinct to offer a promotion for a blowjob.”

Steve and Bucky startle. Steve realizes, a moment later, that there’s history here. Carol’s eyes are cold, bright with a hatred Steve has never seen before, something worn and personal.

Ross has gone red in the face. He scowls at her.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he snaps. “Aren’t you in sex crimes now?”

Carol says, “Yeah. And I assume you’re ignoring the fact that your old drinking buddy has a list of rape accusations a mile long, right?”

Steve has taken Bucky’s hand again and is holding on tight.

“His wife didn’t testify again,” Ross snaps. “There’s no substantial evidence for Barnes’ accusations.”

“You son—”

Fury cuts Steve off. “C’mon, Thaddeus. _Out_. Let the adults talk now.”

Ross curls his lip, but he stands. Toomes follows him.

“Don’t bother following up,” Carol says cooly, “We’re on it.”

“I see you haven’t learned how to smile, Danvers,” Ross says, scoffing at her as he walks past. She holds his gaze.

“Not for arrogant pricks who abuse their position and might as well have gotten their insides surgically removed to stick their heads that far up their asses,” she says without missing a beat. “Don’t you have a wife to cheat on?”

“Bitch,” Ross hisses, shouldering past her. 

“Reread your brief on sexism in the workplace,” Carol says cheerfully. Ross slams the door behind them; Bucky jumps.

Confrontation melting off of her, Carol rushes in, settling into Sam’s spot on the couch. “Shit, guys, I’m sorry, what happened?”

Calmer, Fury sits a safe distance away, the seat Ross had taken before, flipping open his notebook. Less worried about how he comes off in front of them, Bucky buries himself against Steve again, shuddering.

Carol gets it, shakily, out of him. She doesn’t ask him if he fought back, she doesn’t sneer the names of his other abusers, she doesn’t point out that he’s out of prison for a reason. She listens, nodding, and then squeezes his hand.

“We’re gonna get a warrant to arrest him,” she tells Bucky gently. “And then I’ll call you after, alright? It’s all gonna be fine. We’ll handle him.” She pauses. “Do you guys own a gun?”

“No,” Bucky snaps, “and we aren’t getting one.”

Carol relents and nods. Then, she reaches into her pocket, digs for a moment, and hands him a tube of pepper spray. “Just in case,” she says apologetically.

“Thanks,” Bucky mumbles.

She gets photos of the bruises for evidence; Bucky flinches hard when she asks for it and shivers through it, and then slumps against Steve again. Carol promises to call afterwards before she takes off with Fury, leaving them to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thorough trigger warnings
> 
> about halfway through there's a scene where brock corners bucky and threatens him and grabs him and kisses his neck and is generally a piece of shit, it's not long and it ends when steve and sam and natasha show up 
> 
> sorry this is late i've been simultaneously depressed and busy which hasn't been a great writing combination but anyway when you guys leave comments it gives me sm more motivation lol thanks for always being lovely ahhh i'll probably see you next weekend but if not in 2 weekends lots of love to you all
> 
> jessemovie on tumblr


	11. eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for some talking about past abuse this chapter

Wanda shows up a few hours later; Sam had texted her. She barrels in, hair frizzing from the rain, worried, and throws her arms around Bucky. He hugs her back. He’ll never stop being grateful for her. After she pulls apart, she smooths her hair down and kisses Sam (“I’m—I’m sorry,” Natasha says, looking, bewildered, between them. “Is this—am I—are you—was anyone going to tell me about this development?”), and asks them what they need, and makes everyone hot chocolate and stays with Sam and Natasha into the evening.

Bucky and Steve don’t pull apart all day or night. No one comments on it. No one even gives them a second look. They’re probably a little clingier than most couples to begin with, never without an arm around each other or not holding hands and always, much to the mocking of their friends, pecking a kiss to the other’s cheek or saying something like _need anything else, baby?_ Most people chalk it up to having been forcibly separated for four years.

It’s pathetic, Bucky knows, how badly he needs Steve. But Steve being close to him, hands gentle through his hair and on his back and planting kisses on his face and whispering to him, brings him so much comfort that it makes him want to start crying again. A year ago, Steve would brush against him and he’d go catatonic with panic, and now Steve holding him is the only thing that can calm him down like this. Probably, it’s dysfunctional. Jennifer said it isn’t, that it’s incredible that he’s gotten to a point where touch can make him feel safe and okay, but it feels pathetic, the desperation in which he holds onto Steve. 

Steve is perfect, though, so he doesn’t patronize him or get annoyed or tell him to pull it together. He just stays, helps Bucky breathe through his crying, and when Bucky thinks about how Brock would hit him if he cried and Pierce would sneer _None of that, sweetheart, let’s not pretend you didn’t do this to yourself, hm?_ and other men would reach around and cover his mouth and Steve just _stays_ , so gentle and never asking him to be anything but what he is, he starts crying harder. He wishes he deserved Steve. He wishes he could believe he deserved Steve. 

They lie down after their friends leave, early, but they’re exhausted. In bed, they fit close to one another, limbs tangled like ancient, intertwined vines, curled towards one another like wildflowers towards the sun. 

Steve worries like he hasn’t since just after the Pierce incident. Not incident, that sounds wrong, trivial and inconsequential. He winces thinking about it. Since Pierce kidnapped Bucky and tried to rape and kill him and then put a gun on Steve and then Bucky almost shot him and almost shot Steve in the process. Incident. Right.

But he hasn’t seen Bucky this way since after it all happened. He shakes in Steve’s arms, uncontrollably, feeling simultaneously shrunken and too heavy. Steve bites his cheek thinking about all the times he’s held Bucky like this in the last year, through nightmares and breakdowns and panic attacks brought on by watching the people who abused him call him a liar under oath. He thought they were through the worst. He thought after everything, they had paid their suffering dues a hundred times over and there couldn’t be anything else monumental to knock them down.

“What… what have I told you about him?” Bucky whispers finally. His voice seems smaller in the dark.

Steve hesitates. His fingers don’t stop moving over Bucky’s back, or through his hair. “That he… that he hurt you. He, um, brought you back to his… his place and he wanted to… he was into, um, BDSM stuff.” Steve winces. Bucky shivers and presses closer to him. “And he hurt you after that, too.”

A sea of silence stretches between them, grey and tumultuous. Finally, Bucky whispers, “When I first met him, he told me he wouldn’t arrest me if I gave him a blowjob and did a good job.” He tenses, in the way Steve has come to know means shame, means expectancy of disgust. Bucky doesn’t talk about what happened to him much outside of therapy or a moment when there’s a bad trigger, nightmares or touches or a glimpse of someone who looks so much like the people who hurt him that he’ll go frozen with terror and Steve has to talk him down. For him to be bringing it up like this, it means it’s awful, eating away at him from the inside until all he’s left with is panic and grief and disgust.

Without a word, Steve kisses his forehead and begins to braid his hair with one hand. _When you touch me like, um, I’m not disgusting...that helps, a lot,_ Bucky admitted, although Steve can’t remember when anymore. He hates that Bucky ever feels disgusting so deeply he thinks it’s splitting him open sometimes, hates that they made him unable to see that the universe and anything important it could possibly hold is Bucky, in his hands and his smile and the curve of his waist.

Bucky relaxes a little into the touch. When he doesn’t say anything for a few heavy moments, Steve murmurs, “I’m right here, Buck, it’s alright.”

Bucky nods against his shirt.

“When he b-brought me to his house that time, um. He, um. He t-tied me up so I couldn’t move at all and—and used a blindfold and—and a gag and he raped” —Even in the middle of being horrified, Steve is so proud of him for the way he’s saying all of this. Back all those months ago, when he’d first told him about the things that had happened, about Pierce and Rumlow and all of it, he couldn’t call it rape. It sends a weak jolt of relief through him.— “me and he—he hit me with—with something. I don’t even—I didn’t even know what was happening, it just hurt so bad. And he’d—he’d leave and—and come back—” Bucky’s entire body constricts with terror, like he’s back there, bound and abused and hearing Brock come back in and knowing what was about to happen. Tears prick Steve’s eyes. “And he didn’t let me leave or move and he said I was disgusting and he made me—he made c-call him things and—and he made me thank him.”

Tears slip down Bucky’s face, settling into Steve’s shirt. He’s tense, the words still coming, like he’s been wound up and can’t stop. “It was six or seven more times after that. Usually… usually in his car. He… he hit me a lot. He liked to… to use something, um. A belt, or a whip, or um, whatever. He um. He—he said—” Bucky’s voice has stayed hollow and mechanical this whole time, but it breaks now. “He said he wouldn’t have to—to hurt me if I was good. He said I deserved to be punished. I tried—” A sob bursts through the words. Steve thinks about Bucky saying, a few weeks ago, _could you just… just please not hit me, I know I deserve it_ and familiar, out of control hate burns, feverish, through all of him. “I tried to do what he—what he wanted, I tried not to—to—to scream or cry or—or do anything to make him mad but he still—he still did it.” Bucky sobs wordlessly into Steve’s chest for a few moments; Steve holds onto him, kisses his hair, rubs his back through it. “I said no and he—he’d grab me, and hit me, and tell me I—tell me I should be g-grateful he wasn’t—wasn’t um—” He tucks himself closer to Steve; it means he’s scared. “Um. Wasn’t taking—taking me to the station and t-tying me up and letting everyone have a turn. And he just… he just kept coming back, to the area he knew I’d be, and when I st-stopped going there, every time I saw a police car I’d just fucking freeze.” When he looks at Steve, his face crumbles, tear-streaked and heavy with trauma.

“Oh, Buck,” Steve whispers. The words ache to say. “Oh, sweetheart. Baby, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“I thought he was gone.” Bucky’s voice is utterly shattered. Splintered wood, broken bones, defeation in every syllable.

“I know,” is all Steve can say. “It’s not fair, baby. I’m so, so sorry.”

“I’m so scared of him.” Bucky tucks his head tighter against his chest, body curling in, automatic protection. “And he knows that.”

“I know,” Steve says, so softly. “Buck. After what he did, you—it’s so, so okay to be scared.” He swallows. “Baby, I’m so, so, so sorry I wasn’t there today, and the other day.” Guilt twists hotly in his chest. Eyes closed, Bucky shakes his head. “Baby, I’m not gonna let him get near us again. I promise. I’ll literally just be your bodyguard everywhere until it gets sorted out.” He’s only fractionally joking, but Bucky chokes out a laugh. “I mean it, baby, I won’t leave you alone. He won’t touch you.”

“Don’t—don’t apologize,” Bucky hiccups, “you kicked his ass today.”

“I should’ve been there,” Steve whispers.

Bucky lays both hands on either side of his face. “You were there.”

Steve kisses his forehead, and Bucky weeps softly for a few beats. Steve brushes tears from his cheeks, shushes him. His knuckles ache a little, but his lets them run over Bucky’s skin lightly.

“Sorry I’ve been crying twenty times a day lately,” Bucky mumbles.

“I never want you to apologize for anything about yourself, baby,” Steve says, after a few moments. Bucky hides his face in Steve’s shirt and shudders with another sob. “You’re okay, baby. You’re safe, Buck, you’re safe. I promise, okay? This is all gonna blow over.” He believes it, because he can’t afford to believe otherwise.

Bucky, he knows, doesn’t. Bucky’s always been like that, too cautious to believe anything but the worst, because, he’s told Steve, hope feels dangerous. “Good things haven’t happened to me in so long,” he whispered once to Steve, right after they kissed for the first time in four years and all the knots in Steve straightened themselves out. “This is so good, Steve. I don’t know how to stop being scared of when it goes bad.”

“Good things are only gonna happen to you from now on,” he said, and kissed Bucky’s knuckles, “I promise, baby.” And then Alexander Pierce had pried his way back into Bucky’s life at a Christmas party and there had been bad thing after bad thing after bad thing, until he was fucking finally gone and Steve had thought _okay. Now we can be happy._

“I can’t do another court case.” Bucky’s voice breaks into a sob. “I don’t—I’m not strong enough to do this again, Steve. I can’t—I can’t st-stop him from coming back. I couldn’t even stop him from raping me.”

Steve turns onto his side. Bucky’s eyes are closed, fluttering in grief, tears still pouring down his cheeks. “Yes, you are,” he whispers, thumbing across Bucky’s cheek, light as wind. “You are strong enough, Buck. And you—you don’t have to be strong all the time, ‘kay? You aren’t alone anymore, baby. Whatever happens, I’m here, and I’m with you through everything. Buck.” Steve’s chest hurts. “Baby. You spent so long having to… having to be alone, and scared, and hurt. That’s not how it is now. Let me take care of you, my love.”

It takes Bucky a minute to answer. His chest heaves with shallow, panicky breathing, tears still running down his cheeks, so much sorrow that Steve feels something heavy crack inside him. Eventually, he reaches up where Steve’s hand is light on the side of his face and takes it, slipping his fingers between Steve’s and squeezing.

“Sometimes—” Bucky whispers, and swallows. “Sometimes I’m so scared that I can’t remember what it’s like to not feel like this.”

“You will,” Steve says softly, shifting his hand so their thumbs line up. “It’s okay, baby. To be scared, to be angry, to be hurting, wherever you are, it’s okay, and it’s gonna be okay.”

On Bucky’s legs, Penny stands, circles, and settles down again. It’s quiet, just alternating, soft breaths and the shift of the mattress. 

“Steve?” Bucky whispers.

“Yeah, Buck?”

“I, um—” he flinches, face going sharp with pain. “This isn’t too much for you? You aren’t—you aren’t sick of this?” _Sick of me_ , Bucky doesn’t say.

“Hey,” Steve says, and kisses his fingers. “You think I’m gonna quit because things get hard?” Bucky smiles sadly and shakes his head. “Bucky, never. You’re stuck with me, okay?” He smiles again, a little more genuine. Steve drops his voice. “Buck, I’m here. I love you. I’ve always loved you and I’m always gonna love you, and I’m never gonna get tired, and I’m always, always gonna be right here with you. And I’ll tell you that until you believe it, and then more, baby. End of the line means end of the line.”

“I love you,” Bucky says shakily. He squeezes Steve’s hand. “I love you, I love you. Sorry to—to make you repeat that—”

“Don’t be sorry, baby. Whenever you need me to remind you, I will. Always, Buck.” Steve smiles at him, and Bucky buries his face in Steve’s chest again, exhaling with a tremor. Steve wraps his arms around him and holds on, as if it’s enough, and it almost feels like it is.

***

“About fucking time,” Brock growls when he picks up the phone. He’s a person who can never just _say_ things; it’s always growling, or snarling, or sneering, because frankly, all of the bullshit he deals with requires more than a simple response.

“How’d it go?”

“Terrible,” Brock spits, “Rogers showed up, of fucking course. I swear to god, he’s got some kind of goddamn alert out on James, for when someone else touches him.” He’d have liked to have that for James. Or for Sharon.

“God, really? What’d he do?”

“Tried to break my fucking nose. Might’ve done it, too.” He’s holding a wad of paper towels to the blood on his face; he retracts it to take a swig of beer.

“That’s perfect, though. Were there any witnesses?”

Brock rolls his eyes. “No. James and Rogers and two friends of theirs, but I’m sure they won’t say a word against them.”

A hum of resignation. “Still. That’s more physical evidence. That’s even better than we could’ve hoped.”

“Yeah, well.”

“How was it before that?”

Brock laughs. “Exactly what you’d expect. James was scared shitless, but he listened to me. He’s still fucking pathetic.”

A rough laugh on the other end. “So you’re ready for tonight?”

“You’re still paying me what we agreed, right?”

“Jesus, yes. Arnim will get it to you. This benefits you too, you know.”

“I’m the one putting my neck on the line here, Alex,” Brock snaps, and takes another gulp of beer. “Fine, yes. I’m ready. We’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Don’t fuck this up,” Alexander snaps. Brock grits his teeth. Makes sense, sometimes, why Rogers punched him. He can be fucking insufferable.

“I’ll try,” he snarks. “Jesus. I’ll be fine.”

“Good luck, Brock,” he says, unusually warm, if you could call it that. It’s a shame he’s locked up; they could do a lot more if he were out. 

Alexander hangs up. Brock winces a little at the pain but blinks through it, then tosses his drink and heads out.

***

“You sure you’re okay with all of this?” Fury asks Carol, on the drive to Brock’s place.

“Yeah,” she snaps, “why wouldn’t I be?”

“‘Cause usually you only get like this during kid cases.”

Carol rolls her eyes. “I’m not getting like anything. We just gotta arrest him.”

“Carol,” Fury says carefully, “just slow down, alright? We’re gonna get him. Just… I know you care about those two, but you gotta relax.”

“They need someone looking out for them, Fury,” Carol says, softer. “They’re kids.”

Fury makes a noise of agreement. “They ever talk to you about what happened last year?” he asks her after a moment.

Carol shrugs, staring out at the road. She hates driving in the city. “Not much. A little.” She winces. “He told me why he doesn’t like being called James.” Fury waits expectantly. “‘Cause that’s what Pierce and Rumlow and all those pervs called him. And we called him that when he was reporting him.” She winces a little; so does Fury. “Anyway. Beyond that, really not a lot. You know Maria’s better at all that.”

“That she is.” Carol flips him off. “This’ll be easy, Carol. We got him, okay?”

Carol didn’t mean to become a detective. She studied sociology and criminology and thought about law school. Then she had been interning at the Manhattan DA’s office the summer of her junior year of college and she was making copies, and in the background, Maria Hill, hired just weeks before Carol started there, and another detective were having an important conversation about evidence in a case that Carol had actually been paying attention to, and Carol, inviting herself in, had turned around and said “Well, honestly, I think the fact that no one has talked to his kids at all is a problem.”

They’d both been so surprised they laughed. “We have,” the detective told her, “We can’t put it on record, though. They’re all under eighteen.”

“Not the son,” Carol pointed out. “He’s in the reports.” 

“He doesn’t live with the family,” the detective said. “He can’t tell us much.”

Carol leaned forward and smiled. “If the other siblings would talk with him there, then you could use that.”

And they’d both given her small, impressed smiles.

“Have you thought about becoming a detective, Danvers?” Lawson, the detective asked her later. Carol suppressed a smirk.

“I don’t wanna be a cop,” she told her.

“I don’t mean uniform and patrol and ticketing. At first, maybe, but not long. You could investigate cases. You’d clearly be good at it.” Carol was so taken aback that she’d blinked, and Lawson smiled and handed her a card and said, “If you ever wanna talk about it, give me a call.” 

Then she’d gone home to tell her girlfriend of three years, and Maria had burst out laughing and said, “Carol, last week you got us thrown out of a bar for fighting. You aren’t gonna be a cop.”

And here they were.

She did two years in uniform, which she hated, and then took the test and passed it and started in sex crimes. She could’ve moved, probably, to undercover or narcotics or murder. But she didn’t want to. Rape was the only crime with no grey area, in her opinion. People killed people all the time for valid reasons. She told Fury that once, and he snorted and said that she sounded like every perp they were interrogating. It was true, though.

Shows like SVU would have people believe that every case affects detectives the same. Awful as it was, that’s not true anymore for Carol. You get numbed to it. Maria told her that was probably causing trauma. She was probably right. 

More accurately, everyone has their _thing_ that they can’t handle. Fury hates murder cases. Their friend Val can’t stand family abuse. Carol hates cases where kids get hurt. 

She thinks, like she always, inevitably does, about Monica, and takes a breath. It’s too awful to even entertain, to think it and put the possibility out into the world of her baby getting hurt. Every pervert she puts away is one less freak that’s living on the streets in a city with her daughter. Of course, if anyone ever did anything to Monica, she wouldn’t arrest them. She’d find them and take them somewhere and castrate them and skin them and then burn them alive. Fury would probably help.

It’s not protection entirely unlike what she’s feeling for Bucky right now. Last year, when he and Steve had walked into the precinct and Bucky had sobbed through his recollection of what Pierce did to him, she’d thought, _poor kid_ , but she’d moved on. Then a few months later she’d blazed into Alexander Pierce’s penthouse and found them shell-shocked and delirious and soaked in blood, and she’d thought there was no way they’d ever recover from that, but they have, they are, and it’s so goddamn unfair that this is happening. Her chest hurts right now. Brock should burn alive. Pierce should burn alive. No one should get to scare Bucky the way she’d seen today and get away with it.

“What’s the deal with you and Ross?” Fury asks her, breaking her out of it. “You never told me anything about him.”

Carol snorts bitterly. “When I was in uniform, I worked with him for a little. Offered me a promotion for a blowjob. I told him to go fuck himself, and he told everyone I came onto him, he rejected me, and I threatened to report him for harassment and assault. Even though, you know, I was married to a woman and everyone knew that. I transferred after that.”

“Jesus, Carol,” Fury says quietly. “You never told me—”

“Yeah, well.” She doesn’t like thinking about that. “These guys… they’re all the fucking same, Fury. Of course he’d be buddies with Rumlow.”

Fury is quiet for a moment. Then, sensing she doesn’t want to talk anymore, he says quietly, “You ever meet Brock? Before he was arrested?”

“Nope,” Carol says, flicking her turn signal on. “Interviewed his wife last year, before we got put on that Queens trafficking case.”

“What’s she like?” They’re just killing time until they get there, but Carol knows it’s partially a review, a prep if this arrest becomes anything.

“Sad,” Carol says, “Not as much of a mess as some of the victims are. She was pregnant then, probably had the baby now. A lot younger than he is.”

“Shocker.” Carol hums in agreement. “How come she didn’t testify a second time, you think?”

Carol frowns. “I couldn’t figure that out, actually. Val covered her case in the end and said she did a great job on the stand.” They mull it over in the silence. “You ever meet him?”

“Yeah,” Fury says, grimacing. “Did the training program with him.”

“Really?” That surprises her.

“Yeah. He was an asshole. One of those neo-nazi types.” She didn’t know that, but it’s somehow the least surprising thing she’s ever heard. “Didn’t see this coming, though.”

Carol bites her lip. “We never do.”

She parks them, and they head back to his house. The neon lights of the shop underneath are on full, ugly display, turning his door red.

“Brock!” Carol snaps into the receiver. “We’ve got a warrant! Open the goddamn door!” No friendliness this time, no trying to milk him dry of a confession.

There’s nothing, so she tries again, then lets Fury do it. “Trying to wait us out, you think?” he asks her, and she nods.

Eventually, a neighbor lets them in, a youngish guy so obviously on drugs that when they tell him they’re detectives, he tenses like he’s about to run. Carol rolls her eyes and pushes past him upstairs.

Brock’s place is empty and unlocked. Carol and Fury, in the same beat, go tense, hands on the holster of their guns, shoulders thrown back and alert.

“Rumlow!” Fury barks, “Get out here.”

There’s nothing, not even a suggestion that he’s there, no shift of a floorboard or muffled breath. Carol relaxes a little, frowning. She shoves through the papers on his coffee table; tabloids, unpaid bills. No more elusive checks, unfortunately. She’d have only loved to tack a few years for collusion onto Pierce’s life sentence.

Fury raises an eyebrow at her. She casts a cautious look around the room and waits.

Her phone whining to life startles her. “Hello?” Carol answers, frowning.

“Danvers.” Lawson sounds annoyed. “You didn’t tell me the guy you’re trying to arrest is incapaicitated.” They spent the last two hours explaining why they needed a warrant and what Brock was doing and why the check from Pierce mattered, and Lawson, rather begrudgingly, had given them the go ahead, and she sounds like she regrets it enormously.

Fury swings around, startled. Carol blinks.

“I didn’t—he—sorry?”

“Brock Rumlow,” Lawson says irritably, “was just checked into a hospital after being jumped and beaten in an alley. And you’re prowling around his apartment, I assume, so please get out until this is sorted out.”

It doesn’t need to be sorted out. Carol knows. She closes her eyes.

“Rogers?” Fury says quietly. She nods.

“That fucking idiot.” She hangs up on Lawson and goes to call Steve, although Steve is probably in fucking custody, so she calls Bucky, pacing across Rumlow’s floor, head in her hands.

“Hey, Carol,” Bucky says softly. “What’s up?”

“Where are you guys?” she says, heart racing.

A pause. “Um. We’re home.”

“Steve, too?”

“Uh, yeah. Why wouldn’t—is something going on?”

Carol blinks at the floor. “Is Steve right there?”

“Hey,” she hears him say, casually, like he didn’t just fuck up the rest of his life.

She takes a sharp breath. “What the fuck were you thinking?” Carol snaps. 

There’s silence on the other end and then, sounding genuinely bewildered, Steve says “What?”

“Why would you go after him?” Carol demands. “Do you understand how much trouble you’ve gotten yourself into?”

More silence. “Carol, um… What are you talking about?” Bucky says finally.

“Steve, he’s in the hospital.” Carol snaps, ignoring this. “There are gonna be charges pressed. You need to tell me what happened right now.”

“Who’s in the hospital?” Steve asks her.

She smacks her hand against the couch. “Goddamn fucking Brock Rumlow is.”

“Are you serious?” Steve says, stunned. “But I—I punched him twice, he was fine, he got on the subway—”

Carol is about to yell at him again when Nick grabs the phone. “Steve,” he says carefully, “are you saying you haven’t seen Rumlow since this morning?”

“No!” Steve says hotly.

“He’s been here with me all day,” Bucky adds quietly. 

Carol says, very slowly, “Steve. You didn’t go beat the shit out of Rumlow between when we left your house and now?”

“No, Carol, god,” Steve says. “Believe me, there’s nothing I’d have liked to do more.”

“What happened?” Bucky asks sharply.

Carol lets her fist uncurl. “Um. Well. I guess someone else did, then. Rumlow’s in the hospital. Apparently he got jumped.”

“You’re kidding,” Steve says. 

“Nope,” Carol replies. “I don’t… Never mind. Sorry to yell at you, Rogers.”

“It’s… It’s okay,” Steve replies. “Um… Do you know what… this means, exactly?”

A truck going by casts a brief band of white around the room. “No,” Carol says finally. “It means nothing bad, though. Sorry to call you. Get some rest with the knowledge that this piece of shit got what was coming to him tonight.”

So they hang up, and Carol and Fury slip, bewildered, out of the apartment.

“This is a good thing, Carol,” Fury tells her, when he notices her pursing her lips. “We can interrogate him when he gets out. It’s fine.”

“You’re right,” she says absently. But her mind is somewhere else, fractioned off into images and static, Bucky in tears today, whimpering softly what Brock did to him, and dried blood caking Steve’s knuckles and Ross looking at them, mouth twisted between a sneer and a smirk, and some anonymous, hazy figure beating the shit out of Brock Rumlow, and none of it feels like a good thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys are so FUCKING good i swear you write these comments and you don't even know how much they mean to me oh my godhjkfhdj you are all angels dear god
> 
> jessemovie on tumblr


	12. twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it’s been 12 years but! Here are 7 thousand words to make up for it
> 
> Warnings for flashbacks not to rape but to upsetting sexual situations and bucky being sad for most of this chapter

_February, 2012_

_Brock is drunk, enjoyably so, drunk enough that the bartender tries to throw him and the others out but he flashes his badge and the prick leaves them alone._

_“Sharon ever loosen up for you, Rumlow?” Stern slags him. Brock shoves him and downs another sip of his drink._

_“‘Course not. That fucking bitch.” Resentment ripples through him. “Fucking frigid. I’m her goddamn husband, least she could fucking do is put out. On my fucking birthday, at that.” He doesn’t tell them that it isn’t up to her whether she puts out anymore. He thinks they’d understand, but the risk is there. He throws the rest of the drink back and waves for another._

_“You’re getting old,” Georges tells him, with a gruff laugh. “No wonder she doesn’t wanna spread her legs for your middle-aged—”_

_“Ah, fuck you,” Brock replies, and flips him off. “Thirty-eight isn’t middle aged.”_

_“Nothing, though? Really?” Johann adds, eyes narrowed. “Selfish of her.”_

_Brock sneers in agreement._

_“Jesus,” Jack adds. He’s drunker than Brock, and he smirks. “Oughta find some piece of ass here, take her home, show that bitch how a real woman fucks.”_

_Brock swigs half the gin and smirks over the rim of his glass. “Nah,” he says. “I’ve got someone better on the side, anyway.”_

_The four of them turn to him, finally interested in something he’s said._

_“You’re kidding,” Jack says, and hits his shoulder proudly. “Who is she?”_

_Brock must be very drunk, because he tilts his head at Jack and says, “Not a she, my friend.”_

_“You’re not queer,” Johann snorts, rolling his eyes. “Don’t give us this bullshit, Rumlow.”_

_“Jesus, no, fuck you. I’m not a fuckin’ fag.” Brock scoffs. “It’s not like fucking a guy. He’ll beg and cry and listen more than any of your wives. He’s just fucking satisfying.” They’re all watching with a combination of intrigue and repulsion. “I’m totally in control. And he’ll just take it.”_

_“You’re talking about rape there, Brock,” Stern says seriously._

_Brock raises an eyebrow and snorts. Then Stern grins, and all five of them burst out laughing._

_This has been his secret for a few weeks now, whenever he swings by fifty-first. It’s not exactly something you publicize to your precinct or your friends. Right now, though, a glint of triumph cuts through him, at the control he has, at the fact that he knows everyone sitting with him would enjoy it as much as he does._

_“He’s got one arm,” Brock says with a smirk. “Ever done that before? Fucking incredible.”_

_Georges rolls his eyes. “Good on you, Brock, but I don’t care what kinda sex it is, I ain’t fucking another guy.”_

_Jack is watching him, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Ah, technicalities, Georgie. I wouldn’t mind. Lucky you, Brock.” Stern gives a nod of jealous agreement._

_“Wish I had something like that.” Stern tips his beer bottle towards him._

_Brock leans back, smirking, folding his arms over his chest. “Well, gentlemen, it just so happens you can.”_

***

Steve has therapy the next morning, which he almost cancels before Bucky shoves him out the door. “Baby, I’d rather stay with you,” he says. He doesn’t say _in case Rumlow breaks out of the hospital and tries to rape you again_ , but they both know it’s there.

“I have nothing else happening today,” Bucky informs him, “you can be with me after you go process the stressful shit happening. There’s no shortage of that.” Steve gives him a look. “Steve,” Bucky adds gently, “the day you start missing therapy ‘cause of me is the day we break up. Please go.”

So he goes. “Call me if anything’s up, alright?” He says, probably twenty times on his way out, and Bucky rolls his eyes and promises to. He has the feeling that if it weren’t for whatever saint had kicked the shit out of Brock yesterday, there would be no removing Steve from his side. The thought makes him feel safe, in some fucked up sense of the word.

The knowledge that Brock is in a hospital unwound the noose from Bucky’s neck enough to get him out of bed that morning. He pulls one of his favorite of Steve’s sweaters on, a cable knit burgundy one that smells like him, and makes coffee and curls up on the couch with Penny next to him to write some. 

The panic of yesterday hasn’t quite let up, just gone stale. It sits, unmoving, in his body, his limbs tight, like strings that have been pulled too-taut and are waiting to be plucked or snapped. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe through it, forces himself to do some of the relaxation exercises Jennifer has instilled in him, but he can’t get his head clear enough for it and he gives up. He could jog; it’s cold but not unbearable, and Penny would like it. That helps, sometimes, much to Steve’s smugness and Bucky’s irritation. He tosses back the rest of the coffee and decides to go in half an hour.

His self preservation plans get dashed, because apparently the world has been into that lately. The doorbell rings, making his heart do a little leap in his throat, and he goes to check it warily, Penny sticking close beside him.

It’s Ross. Bucky closes his eyes, sickness settling in his throat and chest and stomach. He’s with another cop, and he smirks a little when Bucky pulls the door open as little as possible to let him talk.

The other guy, he doesn’t recognize right away, but miserable familiarity crawls up his spine, and then his breath falls away.

_“On your stomach,” he tells Bucky gruffly. Bucky swallows and listens. Guys like him are always the same; they like him anonymous and quiet and convenient. He waits, and realizes, after a moment, that he can taste blood, and his teeth are locked tight around his cheek._

_“Take your hair down,” the guy says, “I like you better that way.” Bucky does it._

_He’s rough with it, pulls Bucky’s hair, calls him things that he doesn’t hear. Bucky stares forward and tries not to feel it. He severs himself from his body so easily these days. Soon, the thinks, he’ll stop being able to slip back. There’s a painting above the bed; he stares at it, until the guy shoves his head down. Then he just closes his eyes._

_“This fucking place wouldn’t let me pay hourly,” he complains when he’s done, ignoring the fact that Bucky is still trembling on the bed. “Wasted a hundred goddamn dollars for a full night. I’ll never hear the fucking end of it if I don’t come home tonight.”_

_He expects Bucky to answer, he knows, so he chokes out, “Oh.”_

_Bucky flinches when he sits down next to him again, and touches his face. He’s fully dressed and Bucky’s still naked, and Bucky gets the feeling he isn’t supposed to move yet. Hollowness rings all through him._

_“You’d never do that to me, right, sweetheart? You’d just be my good little boy.” Bucky doesn’t do anything. When he tightens his hands around his jaw, he shivers and nods. “Get up, then, honey. Gotta check out.”_

_Bucky knows by now that he can get his legs to work, even when it feels like they’ll shatter beneath him under any weight at all. He blinks, though, processing what he’s said._

_“W-wait,” Bucky whispers. “Wait, um—” He gets himself, somehow, to his knees._

_The guy swings around, eyes dark. “Did I tell you to talk?” he says sharply._

_“N-no,” Bucky whispers. “No, ‘m sorry—”_

_He grips Bucky’s jaw again; tears burn behind his eyes. Then he smiles, brings his thick fingers to Bucky’s mouth, pulls his lip down. The tears pound up against his head. He can’t tell if it’ll earn him more money or piss the guy off._

_“I know you are, baby. Always such a good little slut for me.” He pulls his hand from Bucky’s mouth and pats his cheek hard. Bucky winces. “Don’t let it happen again, sweetheart.”_

_Desperate, Bucky whimpers, “Pl-please. Sir.” His skin crawls. He wants to die. “If you aren’t, um—if you paid, already, can I keep the room for the night? I’ll—I’ll check out tomorrow for you.” His voice is so small._

_The guy looks off put, like it’s an inconvenience to think of Bucky being a person who exists beyond when he shows up to fuck him and when he leaves. “Um,” he says. Then he seems to gather himself. He smirks. “It’s gonna cost you.”_

_Bucky closes his eyes and nods. The guy nods to the ground, and he sinks to his knees._

_Once it’s over, Bucky showers until he thinks heat has stripped off the top layer of skin, and brushes his teeth until it hurts, and then collapses into the bed he just got fucked on. It’s better than going outside, anything is better then going outside now. The painting is awful, a lopsided, discolored picture of a Revolutionary War era execution. The guy at the guillotine is smiling. The guy holding the condemned man is too. The victim doesn’t look afraid. He looks blank. Maybe he spends every day getting on his knees for guys who pull his hair and tell him to be good and don’t listen when he screams. Maybe it’s a relief._

Bucky doesn’t know his name. He was a regular, kind of. More than once. The last time he saw him was a few hours before Steve stumbled back into his life in that alley. 

He stumbles back a step. Penny juts herself loyally in between Bucky and the two of them. 

“Mr. Barnes,” Ross says, with a smirk, “good to see you again.”

Bucky exhales shakily. His head threatens to split with pain.

“This is my colleague, Officer Stern,” Ross says, continuing the conversation as if Bucky choking back tears is no issue to him at all. “Stern tells me you two know each other, is that right?”

Stern smiles coldly. “Long time, Bucky,” he says pleasantly. The world freezes and hardens to steel.

He stares down. White noise swells to a vague crescendo and falls again. _Stern._ Bucky slept with him three, four times, never got his name. His skin suddenly feels like it fits wrong. He tries to swallow and finds his throat is too dry to succeed at it.

“No,” he whispers. His voice is so small. “I have—I have nothing else to say to you. Leave. Please. Right now.”

“Bucky.” Ross’s voice goes condescending. “We just wanna ask you a couple of questions. Is Steve here? He’s the one we need to talk to.”

“He’s—he’s on his way back,” Bucky manages. His thoughts immediately spun into _they’re going to hurt you again_ , and no matter how irrational that is, he can’t shrug the terror.

“So can we wait? We’d like to talk to you, too.” Ross has a toothpick dangling carelessly in the corner of his mouth; he spits it at their feet. Bucky winces. 

“I don’t want you here,” Bucky manages. His voice trembles pathetically. Before his nerve can evaporate, away he starts to close the door. Ross gets a rough, heavy hand in the doorframe and stops him.

Panic jolts through Bucky. He’s becoming reacquainted with the endless, impossible misery of knowing what you say doesn’t matter, the people calling the shots aren’t going to be deterred.

“We could have both of you come down to the precinct, instead,” Ross says. His voice stays neutral, but the warning is there, and Bucky buckles under it.

Dread swoops, cold and visceral, in Bucky’s stomach. “Not him,” he says finally, nodding to Stern. Their home is still safe, and Bucky grips that tight to his chest. If the past sweeps in and infects it, it won’t be anymore, and they can’t lose that. As long as it stays on the other side of the door, this is still their home.

Following the initial panic, the dread and shock and disgust, is the _how_ , and that’s almost worse. Stern, Rumlow, Ross. Others, maybe. Tangled up, jagged cracks on glass that all meet at the same point. Fate must laugh at Bucky a lot. He thinks he might faint.

Ross nods to Stern. Bucky wonders if that was the entire reason he dragged him along. Get him kicked to pieces before he even gets in the door so he can get whatever he needs out of him more easily. It works. Bucky feels unstitched, all of his pieces coming loose, yanked out of their tentative places. How many times the universe has laughed at him like this, how many times will he be able to break under the eyes of all of these men before he stops being able to reconstruct himself into something resembling a functional person, until Steve stops being able to soothe him back together. 

Ross makes himself comfortable, throwing himself down in an armchair, legs apart, leaning back. Bucky tenses on the couch, out of place in his own home. There’s a sickening thud of blood rushing through his head.

He wishes, selfishly, pathetically, that Steve were there.

After a moment, Ross stands and crosses the room. Bucky flinches too hard to cover up; he doesn’t miss the sneer. Penny nuzzles closer to him.

“Rogers has quite the body count for you, huh?” Ross remarks. There’s a photo of Bucky and Steve on the mantle, a picture from the beach in Spain where they’re both laughing; he picks it up and looks it over. Bucky’s hands have locked into place on the pillow beside him. “Pierce, Rumlow…” He smirks. “Almost me, yesterday. I’d imagine a few others. Your parents said something on the news about a kid in high school?”

Bucky says coldly, voice shaking, “He loves me.”

Ross stops looking at the picture and turns back to him. “He ever get jealous about what you… used to do?”

Bucky closes his eyes. Penny lays her head in her lap. “No.”

“Then why attack Mr. Pierce last year at the party? And Brock yesterday? And, as Brock reported to me from the hospital, a friend of his on the street last year?”

“What?” Bucky says sharply, alarm flooring him. Ross raises an eyebrow.

“Brock’s got a friend,” Ross says carelessly, “Jack, Josh something? Says last year, he struck a nerve with Steve by talking to you in an alley one night. Apparently, your _boyfriend_ shoved him into a brick wall and threatened him.” 

_Jesus Christ, fuckin’ psycho! I’m going, he’s not worth it anyway._

Bucky presses his hands over his face for a moment. “How…” he hears himself whisper, “How did he know about that?” Everything feels faint and shadowy, unfinished and unstable and folding in on itself endlessly.

“They’re friends,” Ross says, and sits down again, eyes trained on Bucky. “Officer Stern, out there? Old friend of Brock’s too.”

Bucky can’t breathe. His lungs have ceased to exist in his chest, have vanished and left his body paper thin and flickering.

He must be close to a panic attack, because Penny nuzzles close to him, soft and grounding. He holds her and tries to force air through whatever is left of his insides. Ross examines his nails.

“You must’ve impressed Brock quite a lot,” he sneers finally, “in order for him to run his mouth about you to not one, but two other… customers. Stern tells me you had quite the knack for it. Steve get jealous of that?”

He might as well have reached into Bucky’s chest, gotten ahold of whatever he could, and twisted. Everything in him burns, miserable and shameful and unbearably cold, all of the words too hard and coming too fast and he can’t breathe anymore and right now, he doesn’t know what Ross is going to do to him, he doesn’t know and he’s scared, and all of him feels like it’s been sliced off by these men and replaced by rusted metal.

“Get out,” he whispers, when he gets enough air. “Get out of my house.”

“Where was Steve last night around eight pm?” Ross asks Bucky, apparently unphased.

“He was _here_ ,” Bucky grits out. “Get out.”

“And who can confirm that?”

“I can.” Bucky’s voice quivers infuriatingly.

“Ah,” Ross says. “You can.” Ross steps towards him, shoulders thrown back, body hard. Bucky hates himself for flinching. Brief, immediate terror shudders through him. “You see,” he says, “why that’s not exactly an airtight alibi.”

“I’m not talking to you anymore,” Bucky says, “I’ll call my lawyer if you need anything else. I’m not doing this. Leave.”

Ross smirks.

***

Steve, predictably, gets home and hits the roof.

Therapy is hard, which means it’s probably important, but he feels a little shaky afterwards. Everything with Rumlow has left him unsteady, rage quivering at his core, slanting everything in its ugly tint. He’s so worried. He’s so angry.

Henry was patient and logical in the way Steve didn’t have the ability to be in these situations. He told him it was okay to want to find Brock and bash his head into the corner of a block of cement (Steve’s words) but he can’t really do that. He told him Carol and Fury and the law will handle it, and this is going to become an unpleasant story, but it’s okay that right now, it’s suffocating them.

“I don’t know what to do,” Steve whispered, running his hands down his face. “I don’t—he’s—it makes me think that we aren’t ever gonna be safe. That—that Bucky isn’t gonna ever feel safe.” _That I can’t keep him safe._

“Steve,” Henry said seriously, “it’s okay to feel like that, with what’s happened. But you also have to remember that it just isn’t true. You and Bucky are doing so unbelievably well, considering everything. You’re handling a lot. It’s okay to be overwhelmed and stressed by it all, but don’t lose sight of everything you’ve been able to help him with. You aren’t somehow failing as a partner, Steve. You know that, right?”

“I wasn’t there,” Steve said. The words peeled unpleasantly off of his throat. “There… these people, these guys who hurt him—” His throat went tight, and he closed his eyes. “It happened twice with Pierce, and it happened twice with Rumlow, because I wasn’t there.”

“It happened twice with Pierce, and both times you went after him. And yesterday you got there and did that.” He nodded to Steve’s knuckles. “That’s being there, Steve. I know you don’t know what to do because you’re in a really goddamn scary situation, but you aren’t doing nothing. You’ve never not been there for Bucky.” He leaned back in his chair. “As for what you can literally, tangibly do? Get out of town for a couple of days. Take some time to go somewhere together, where you can relax. Just a few days. When you’re back, you can handle the restraining orders or the charges or whatever.” Steve’s stomach inverts itself at the thought of another trial. “It’ll feel good to get away from things right now. You hold yourself to these insane expectations of being able to handle every threat on your own. That’s not realistic for anyone, and I know Bucky doesn’t expect that from you. Just go somewhere else for a few days, if you can. It’ll refresh you.”

So Steve finishes, texts Bucky _how do you feel about going somewhere for the weekend?_ and heads out.

An unlisted number calls him while he’s walking to the subway. He answers, against his better judgment, wearily saying, “Yeah?”

“Steve?” The voice on the other end is familiar, but he can’t place why.

“Yeah,” he says flatly, “who is this?”

The guy clears his throat. “Loki Odinson, we met—”

Steve realizes he’s stopped in the middle of West Fourth, annoyed NYU students pushing past him. “You,” he snarls, “have got to be shitting me.”

Loki sighs. “Don’t hang up, I—”

“If you call me or Bucky again,” Steve says, “we will sue you for harassment and slander and everything in the book. Go exploit someone else.” He’s done. He’s so unimaginably, impossibly done.

“I know you’ve had a tough week,” Loki’s talking quickly. “That’s why, I thought you might’ve changed—”

“What the fuck do you mean you know we’ve had a tough week?” Steve snaps. “You put spies on us, or something?”

Brief, confused silence. “No, I—the CBS documentary airing tomorrow, I—” He clears his throat. “Is this news to you? I assumed they contacted you guys—”

Steve hangs up and grinds his face into his palms. 

“A documentary?” He snarls to Clint on the phone, three minutes later. “Did you know about this?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, “they wanted to interview you.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Steve says irritably. 

Clint sighs. “Rogers,” he says, exasperated, “Do you know how many times a day I get interview requests for you and Bucky? I don’t even represent Bucky.”

“A documentary, though,” Steve spits, agitated.

“It’s an hour long tv special. Odinson was exaggerating.”

“Whatever. I just—fuck. God.”

“Steve?” Clint’s voice softens on the edges. “You doing okay?”

“Great,” Steve snaps. “I gotta go.” He hangs up.

He just wants to be with Bucky. Exhausted, he heads down to the subway. 

He’s steps away from his house when he realizes that there’s someone out front. His chest constricts, and he picks up the pace. The binds around his lungs go tighter when he realizes the guy is a cop, all of his weight leaned in their front gate, staring boredly into the street.

Steve throws his shoulders back. “Can I help you?” he snaps, a little overly aggressive, a little too loud. 

The cop looks up. “Ah,” he says, “Rogers.”

Steve tenses and regards him. “What do you want?” It comes out snappier then he meant.

“My partner is in there talking to James—” Clearly, he’s about to ask Steve something, but he doesn’t get to because Steve hurls himself up the stairs and inside. The cop follows him, after a half hearted, annoyed, “Can you stay here a moment?”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Steve snarls when he gets in, shoulders thrown back, a stake of lividity driven through the words. Ross is back, sneering, hawkish expression trained smugly on Steve. He’s standing in the living room, as close to Bucky as he could get before Penny rooted herself in between them, intimidating him. Bucky looks small; he’s standing, but his arms are crossed over his chest, shoulders turned in, chin down. There’s a small, sharp tug at Steve’s heart.

The cop, scowling irritably, follows him. 

“Ah, Steve,” Ross says. “I was hoping to talk to you.”

“That’s too bad, ‘cause you can’t,” Steve snaps. “Get out.”

“Not so fast, Rogers.” Ross’s voice has gone cold with intent. “Have a seat.”

“No,” Steve says hotly. “You have no right to be here.”

“Where were you last night around eight or nine pm?” Ross says, completely ignoring him.

Steve blinks. “I was here. What the hell do you want?”

“Where’d you get the bruises on your hands, Steve?” Stern says from behind him. Steve swings around; he’s leaning nonchalantly in the doorframe, looking around. He glances at Bucky and his mouth twists into a smirk, almost taunting, almost cruel. Bucky flinches hard and braces an arm across his chest.

“We already reported this, and you did nothing,” Steve snaps. “What’s this about?”

“Ah,” Ross says, “but you didn’t let us take photos, so we have no idea what time you got those.”

“I already told you he was here,” Bucky says. His voice has gone shaky. Instinctually, Steve crosses the room to him; their hands twitch thoughtlessly together, almost magnetic.

Stern sneers at him, and Bucky sinks further back.

“Is this about Rumlow?” Next to Steve, Bucky’s body goes tight. Steve tries to never say their names; inevitably, they’ll make Bucky flinch. Guilt rolls vaguely through him.

Ross raises an eyebrow. “We’re investigating an assault—”

“The wrong assault,” Bucky snaps, eyes bright with anger. His hand is tight on Steve’s, skin pulled taught and white over his knuckles, unmistakeable, brave protection.

“We were busy with prostitution cases,” Stern pipes up, and smirks. Ross snorts.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” Steve snarls, appalled. Bucky has gone very pale. “How the fuck can you say that?” Next to him, Bucky is squeezing his hand tighter, a warning, a quiet _It’s not worth it don’t be stupid_ , but he’s wrong, it is worth it, because anyone treating Bucky like that warrants goddamn carnage.

Ross gives Steve a hard look. “Brock Rumlow says you attacked him, Rogers. And judging by your aggressive nature—” Bucky scoffs “—it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility, now, does it?”

“This,” Steve says incredulously, “is fucking insane.”

Ross turns to Bucky. “He ever get violent with you?” He asks him, carelessly, like he’s asking what they had for breakfast.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Bucky hisses. “ _No._ ”

“You sure? You seem to have a tract record of partnering up with men who do.”

Bucky recoils.

Steve drops Bucky’s hands and takes a step in. “Do not,” he says, very, very quietly, “ever fucking talk to him like that again.” Ross bristles a little for the first time, and satisfaction thrums briefly through him; Steve is taller and broader and easily stronger than him. His voice quivers with disgust. Ross holds his gaze and slides his hand up his holster, warning him.

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky says softly, and he hears the plea in it so he backs off, stepping down and glowering.

“Get out,” Steve says shortly. “Right now, and never fucking come back here or we’ll bring a lawsuit down on you.” Ross snorts, and Steve adds hotly, “You think I’m fucking lying to you? Do you know how easily we can assemble a team?”

“Do that, Rogers,” Ross says, “I’ll be in touch.” He casts Bucky a cold, diminishing look and turns away.

“Steve,” Stern says, with a neutral, professional nod. “James.” Bucky shrinks back, and his mouth twitches slightly; Steve grits his teeth. Then he follows Ross out.

Steve stands there, astonished, blinking at where they just stood. Bucky slumps into the couch and buries his face in his hands. Something in him trembles and gasps for air, pulsing when it can’t get enough. He feels repulsive.

“Jesus Christ.” Steve’s voice has gone soft and dangerous; Bucky looks up. His breath pulls taut, making all of him go rigid, spine snapping up at the quietness of his anger. The panicky, instinctual protection hardens and shatters inward when Steve slaps his hand against the wall hard, his face darkening.

“S-Steve,” Bucky says, his voice so soft, “um, I—red.” It comes out as a gasp; all of him expects the next thing Steve hits to be him. His nerves are overworked, burnt on all the edges, vibrating into uselessness.

It still startles him when Steve stops immediately. His shoulders go slack, aggression cascading off of him, and Bucky thinks ah, right. Steve _listens._ Some of the fear in his stomach uncoils.

“Sorry, Buck,” Steve says softly. “Baby, I’m not mad at you. You know that right?” He sits beside him, leaned into the corner of the couch so Bucky still has space.

“Sorry,” Bucky whispers. 

Steve shakes his head. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” His voice is hoarse, rubbed through with fury and grief and the unfairness of all of this. “Jesus.”

Tears push roughly up in his throat. “I gotta—” Bucky starts, and his head aches, guilt scraping cleanly over his thoughts. “Um. I have to—to tell you s-something.”

Steve sits beside him, so gently that it doesn’t even move the cushions. “Okay,” he says softly. “What is it, baby?”

Shame washes over him. “Please—please don’t be mad.” Bucky can barely get his voice above a whisper. He’s scared, suddenly. He can’t field this much, Rumlow and Stern and Ross and all the vines that these men have entangled so tightly that the moment he tries to break free, the thorns dig into his skin and draw blood. He feels faint.

“Hey,” Steve says, so softly, “hey. I’m not gonna be mad, okay? Whatever it is, Buck, it’s alright.”

Bucky rocks a little, not realizing it, until Steve says, “Baby? You with me? It’s okay, I’m not gonna be mad.” Jennifer told him he does that a lot when he’s distressed, and she’s right. She tries to get him to break those habits; rocking, bouncing his leg, digging his nails into his palm, pinching his real wrist with his prosthetic. Something about it being a manifestation of anxiety, it contributing to the thoughts. All of Bucky is a manifestation of anxiety, though.

Bucky closes his eyes. “The other guy,” he says quietly, “I used to, um. He used to—I—” He flinches, instinctually, away from Steve. Steve pulls his hand back. “He was a _customer_ ,” Bucky spits finally, unable to keep the disgust out of the words.

“The… the cop outside?” Steve asks blankly, after a moment.

Bucky nods, not looking up. Steve takes a breath. 

“Baby,” Steve says quietly, “baby, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Why—why are you sorry?” Bucky says hollowly. “You didn’t—I was the one who did it.”

Steve winces at the language, but says softly, “Buck, it wasn’t your fault.” The shape of those words must have imprinted in his throat at the point.

Bucky shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything for a moment. Instead, he leans against Steve, so Steve wraps an arm around him and kisses his hair.

“How… Steve says after a moment, voice shaky, “how did he, um…?”

“R-Rumlow knew him.” He lets Steve figure out the context of what that means.

“Oh, my god,” Steve says. 

Bucky’s hands shake. “And… and Jack—Jack Rollins.” He flinches. Steve squeezes his shoulder, confused, but doesn’t interrupt him. “He—they were _friends_.” He sobs and curls over on himself.

Steve lets him cry, folded almost in half, leaning over, as Steve lays one arm over his back and touches his shoulder with the other and Penny licks at his face and snuggles her head in his lap. His wiring feels wrong, this belated information having unstitched him again. The thought of them talking about him, laughing or bragging or fucking comparing notes, is so sickeningly, rawly violating that it compresses his lungs. It forces him to remember things. The first time he met Rollins, he had approached him, touched his face with his knuckles, and said _James, right?_ And when he nodded, pulled in deeper into the alley and said, _I’ve been lookin’ forward to this_ , and Bucky didn’t get a word out, hadn’t even tried to say no, let himself be pushed against the wall, cheek digging into brick, and there had been a cop car near, because he remembers tear-blurred blue and red light and thinking that he couldn’t get arrested, _please god don’t let them come back here_. And then he finished and squeezed Bucky’s hips and said _I’ll be back soon, baby, next time I’m gonna take you home, hm?_ And he had, two days later, and said _Get on your knees_ , and when he had, he produced a bottle of vodka and said _Tilt your head back_ and Bucky whimpered out something like a no and he grabbed his hair and snarled, _Jesus, don’t make me do it myself_ —

“Baby, baby, breathe.” Steve’s voice is so, so gentle.

“He knew them.” Bucky’s voice trembles. “The—the whole time he _knew_ them—” He pictures Brock in that car, smirking, waiting for Jack to finish, pictures him saying, _I told you he was fun_ — “He told them, he fucking _told them_ where to find me—”

There is so little for Steve to say, because it doesn’t exactly matter now, all these months later. It just reframes the trauma a little, washes it in red so he is forced to think back to it with this in mind. The police car in the background that one time. 

“Baby, I’m so sorry.” Steve sounds wrecked. “God, Buck. I can’t—I’m sorry.”

 _I’m used,_ Bucky said to Steve, a year ago, when he was convinced Steve wanted nothing to do with him, and more times since then, trying to convey his worthlessness. Every time, Steve has told him, firmly and so gently, that he wasn’t, and he has been able to build up a semblance of relief, but right now _used_ cakes itself over his lungs until nothing else remains. He is exhausted, his mind wrung out from this day, and still, Steve holds him, holds him even though Bucky should be the one comforting him after the police barrelled up to their home looking to arrest him, but Steve’s arms are so steady and warm that he manages to reach up and hug him back, and it slows the world to an almost manageable spin.

***

The second they get grounded again, the world yanks the floor out from underneath them.

They call Pepper, who, apparently, is still working up until labor. It helps, talking to her. They had both been thoroughly freaked out by the idea that Steve might actually get this assault pinned on him, but she explains something about physical evidence and individual rights and the gist of is that they don’t need to worry.

She hangs up, and Bucky hugs him and rubs his back. Steve is tense, muscles screwed too tight, and Bucky rubs his shoulders until he feels them relax a little. “It’s okay, baby,” he says, even though nothing quite feels okay.

Steve hugs him, pulling him into his steady arms and kissing the top of his head. “Yeah,” he agrees weakly. “How are you doing, Buck?”

He isn’t scared, exactly. It’s not a threat. He just feels dirty and violated, belatedly brutalized by it. It’s a hard feeling to explain, so he shrugs and shuts his eyes.

“I think…” Steve says, and shifts his weight. “I think we should go somewhere. I don’t care where. Just not New York.”

Bucky looks up at him. “Yeah,” he says, with an exhale. “Yeah, let’s do that. This week.”

Steve nods and hugs him again.

Things feel like they might have reached a semblance of being ok when the doorbell rings. Bucky winces a little and Steve pulls his hands from his back slightly.

Steve goes for it, but Bucky doesn’t want him to be alone if it’s anything to worry about, so he squeezes his hand and heads with him. It’s not, in fact, a threat, but Carol. 

“Hey.” She leans in the doorway, uncharacteristically subdued. “You guys got a few minutes?”

“Um,” Bucky says, a little surprised, “uh, yeah, yeah, c’mon in.”

She does, and sits across from them, biting her lip. Dread carves a small, hollow place into Bucky’s stomach and stays there.

Carol rubs her hands together. “At Rumlow’s,” she says finally, getting right to the point, “there was a check. Pierce signed it.”

There should be a limit, Bucky thinks, on how much pain the human body can take before it simply gives out. If there were, he thinks he probably would have been finished somewhere back around the second or third guy who raped him. Instead, it absorbs pain, swallows it whole and lets it fester. It takes it and adjusts, like those mattresses that mold around your body while you sleep. Pierce had one of those. Bucky used to wonder if it molded around his body, splintered and limp in the bed. His brain must look that way, molded around everything he’s ever gone through, exhausted and tearing at the seams because the universe keeps finding new things to throw at it, new things for it to try to catch and shape around until it stops having space. _Molded_. Molded. Something rotting from the inside, its core collapsing, something someone could wrap their fingers around and squeeze and watch him wither away. 

He won’t break, Bucky knows, not from bad news, not from nightmares that throttle him, not from abuse, repeated over and over and over, until the scars must go beyond his skin and mind, sewn into his DNA out of sheer repetition. Instead of collapsing when the pain is too much to bear, you just go on. Everyone thinks that there are things they could never live through. Everyone thinks it while those things are happening; Bucky has laid, facedown, spread out and pried open under Pierce and Brock and Jack, etc, and thought, the words squeezed painfully out of his consciousness, _I’ll die if this goes on one more second._ But he didn’t. You never do. Bucky is proof now that nothing is ever too much for one person. Bucky is the poster child for suffering. 

This might be the thing that kills him. He made it through all of it, crawled up from pain that should have buried him, only to be shoved down again by the same people who dug the hole. Pierce, Rumlow, Rollins, Stern, Ross, all wired with cruelty, all working together, taking shifts to make sure that he doesn’t get more than a few weeks of being okay. He can’t do it, not anymore. He’s too tired. 

“That’s—that’s not possible,” Steve says. His voice cracks at the edges, mouth dry.

Carol shuts her eyes. She doesn’t say anything, because it is possible, and they all know it. 

“Zola represented him,” she says finally. 

Steve rakes his hands through his hair. He looks distraught. “Fuck,” he gasps, and Bucky realizes with a start Steve is nearly crying. “ _Goddamn_ it. How the _fuck_ —”

“Rich people can do anything in jail,” Carol says flatly, “I’m sure he’d have access to his accounts.”

Steve purses his lips and gets up to start pacing, agitated, across the floor. “What the fuck,” he snaps. Carol runs a hand through her hair.

Bucky gets shakily to his feet, not sure what he’s intending to do. Then the world goes safely black.

***

Bucky’s probably out for about fifteen seconds in all, but Steve goes through every stage of panic all the same.

“Baby.” He throws himself to his knees next to him, gets an arm behind his back and head so he doesn’t hit the ground, and chokes on his own breath. “Bucky, Buck, baby, stay with me—Carol, call—call nine one one—” he gasps, the words frantic.

Carol sits beside him and touches his shoulder. “He doesn’t need a hospital, Steve, it’s just shock and anxiety—”

“It’s just that?” Steve snarls.

Carol purses her lips. “He’s not in danger,” she says calmly, and, to prove her point, Bucky blinks and pushes himself up, lethargically.

“Baby.” Steve sags with relief. “You okay? You here?”

“S-sorry,” Bucky stammers. 

Steve makes a shushing sound and pulls him into his side; Bucky slumps against him. Carol stands, quick and unworried, and strides to their kitchen, returning a moment later with a glass of water and a banana.

“Drink all of that,” she tells him gently. Bucky rubs a hand over his face. He looks so miserable. “It’s a type of anxiety attack, Buck,” she adds quietly. “It’s happened to me before. You’re okay.”

He takes the water with a small, grateful nod. He looks pale.

“You feel okay, baby?” Steve whispers.

Bucky nods, wincing. “It’s just like when you stand up too fast.”

“Yeah, well I don’t fucking faint when that happens,” Steve answers. Bucky flinches away, and Steve feels immediately awful. “Sorry, sorry, sorry baby. It just scared me.”

“You must really be getting your iron in if that’s never happened,” Bucky retorts, to let him know it’s okay. Steve gives him a weak smile, and then Bucky starts sobbing.

Steve holds him, and Carol gives his arm a squeeze, but there is so little to be said. Later, after Carol has left, they stay there, curled against each other, braced against everything else.

Bucky leans his head into the crook of Steve’s neck. He doesn’t say _If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t be a person of interest in an assault case and also being stalked from jail,_ but it’s all he feels. Steve sighs and reaches both arms around to hug him.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky croaks out finally. His throat is parched.

“Bucky, there’s nothing for—”

Bucky shakes his head. “This is happening ‘cause of me.”

“Bucky,” Steve says seriously. “Bucky, no it isn’t. This is happening because they’re psychopaths.”

“We should’ve known,” Bucky says quietly. “ _I_ should’ve fucking known it’d be him.” 

“How would that ever have been our first thought?” Steve asks him softly. “He’s in jail. He’s supposed to be under control.” His voice shakes bitterly.

Bucky stays quiet. “It’s his type of thing to do.” There’s an edge to his voice. “It’s his style. Fucking creepy notes and texts and just… making it slow, like that.”

Steve rubs up and down his back.

“I _hate_ him.” Bucky’s voice splinters. “I hate him so, so, so fucking much. What the fuck does he want?”

“He’s angry,” Steve mutters.

“I should’ve killed him.” The words taste metallic. “I should’ve fucking shot him. Then he’d be gone and Brock would still be in jail and we wouldn’t be in the middle of this.”

Steve doesn’t tell him not to talk that way. He just holds onto him. 

“He’s gonna get out,” Bucky spits. He’s spiraling; panic has started and it won’t stop, just uncurls further and faster. “He’s gonna—he’s gonna fucking get out and he’s g-gonna hurt—”

“Bucky, baby.” Steve’s voice is so soft. He touches his face lightly, fingers gentle on his cheek. “Baby, he isn’t. I promise. They’ve got him for more than life—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bucky grits out. “This is—this is what he fucking does, he—things work for him, he gets what he wants—”

Steve shakes his bed. “Baby, no. He’s not—he’s not gonna come back like that.”

“Steve—” Bucky’s chest goes tight, suspended. “Steve, you don’t know—he—you don’t know the way he is.”

Steve rubs his neck. “Well,” he says, “I’m not trying to… equate things, but, um, he did try to kill me too. I feel like I’ve got a sense of what the guy’s like.” He gives Bucky a small, sheepish, pursed lips smile.

Incredibly, Bucky laughs. Half laughs, half sobs, but Steve smiles like he considers it a win.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bucky whispers, a moment later. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“I know, baby, I’m kidding,” Steve says, gently. “C’mere, Buck.”

“You’re fucking morbid,” Bucky mutters, but he buries himself in Steve’s chest and winds his arms around him. Steve touches his back and kisses his forehead and they stay there a few moments, holding each other and ignoring the massiveness of what’s happening around them.

“What the hell do we do?” Bucky finally whispers, looking up at him.

“You, uh, you still wanna go away?” Steve asks him. 

“Yeah.” Bucky exhales. “Yeah, I really fucking do.”

So Steve hugs him, and they pretend it’s okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it has been so long i feel like lately my life is either like so much free time or literally not one second of free time and the las 2 weeks have been the latter but anyway here we r
> 
> Jessemovie on tumblr !
> 
> You guys have been so so so nice to me on this fic ur comments are the light of my life u are all so so wonderful probably see u next week loves


	13. thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one Sorry or youre welcome depending on how that makes u feel lmao
> 
> Warnings at the beginning for flashbacks just the italicized part And then there is some much needed happiness coming

_Pierce is holding his chin. His hand is hard, an intrusion on Bucky’s skin, squeezing so tight on his cheeks that it sends brief, electric waves of pain through his head. Bucky is trembling; he’s given up trying to hide it._

_“I’m gonna get you a drink, sweetheart,” Pierce says, after a moment. Panic laces itself through Bucky, though it’s weak now, subdued by the rest of the terror, like tossing a lit match into a wildfire. He watches, flinching at every movement, as Pierce crosses to the kitchen and produces a bottle of whiskey._

_“N-no,” Bucky gasps, “no, not—not th-that, please, I’ll just—” Pierce doesn’t appear to hear him, even though Bucky knows he does. “Alexander,” he croaks out, “Please. Please. You know that—that—that I’m g-gonna do what you want—”_

_He raises an eyebrow, mildly irritated. “Are you, James?” he says neutrally. “Because right now, I want to pour this down your throat. Are you going to do that for me? It seems like you aren’t.”_

_“Please,” Bucky repeats, his voice so small. “I don’t—I don’t want—”_

_“You don’t want to?” Pierce says. “I didn’t realize this was about what you wanted, James. My mistake.” Bucky makes a miserable noise. Pierce tosses back his glass and then fills it, half to the brim, and crosses the room back to Bucky. For whatever it’s worth, this one isn’t roofied. Somehow, the knowledge doesn’t dull the terror, not even for a second. “I shouldn’t even be wasting this on you,” he scoffs. “Do you know how much this cost? More than anything you’ll ever own in your worthless life.” Tears spill uncontrollably down Bucky’s cheeks. Pierce laughs roughly. “Thank me for it, James.”_

_Bucky gasps through another small sob. “Please—” he gets, shaking, to his knees. “Don’t—just let me—”_

_Pierce hits him so hard it sends him, briefly, through a shrieking, oscillating black hole. “You’re so fucking disgusting,” he snarls. Then he yanks his hair back so Bucky has to look up at him. His vision is still in sparks. “I hope you aren’t going to get sick, James, although historically, I know you’re pathetic at holding your alcohol.” He smirks. “You won’t like what happens if you get sick in my living room, understood?” He pries Bucky’s mouth open and tips it back._

_Bucky can’t see. The room comes in and out of focus, glossed briefly over by a fisheye lens and then spinning out, noises that he can’t tell if he hears or not almost reaching his head but falling short. Rollins kicks the vodka bottle aside and says “You look tired, sweetheart, let me get you to bed” and hauls him from the ground up onto the mattress, laid onto his stomach carelessly, hands rough on his back, and his throat is full and thick and burning so Bucky can’t say no or anything, but he makes a terrified noise and Rollins says, “Sh, none of that, I’ll take good care of you. So pretty, baby—”_

_“Not pretty, don’t go giving him an ego,” Rumlow says, from somewhere, and a hand runs down his back. “Just helpless like that.” Something that wasn’t there a moment ago loops tightly around his wrist; something chokes him. “That’s better.”_

_He can’t see, but the next person who touches him is new; a rough, cruel hand on his thigh, squeezing and not letting go. “Please,” Bucky whimpers._

_“Begging for it already?” says Steve._

He wakes up screaming and hysterical. He’s still on his side, jostled awake by Penny, who ruts into him, and then, upon realizing he’s up, trots quickly across the room, raising herself onto her hind legs, and nudges the light on. The panic comes in waves, washing over him, settling in, and then rising and slamming him again.

Steve isn’t next to him, and terror knots itself in his throat for a moment, but before he can hyper focus on that, nausea slams him, and he gets to the bathroom, kneels clumsily in front of the toilet and throws up. Probably thirty seconds later, Steve is there, materialized out of thin air.

“Buck.” Worried, he sinks to his knees, rubbing his back. “Baby, it’s okay, you’re okay, it’s alright.” Bucky thinks, momentarily, about the Steve in his dream, and another wave of sickness comes over him and he heaves into the toilet and Steve murmurs, “It’s okay, baby, you’re okay, you’re okay, I’m right here.”

Bucky blinks lethargically. Steve has red on his hands, and he realizes a moment late that it’s paint and he must’ve been in the studio. 

“Nightmare?” Steve asks sadly. Bucky nods. “Sorry I wasn’t there, baby.”

“‘S not your job,” Bucky replies hoarsely, and pushes himself against the wall, head tilted back against it.

“I don’t want you to have to be alone, during that.” Steve sounds so guilty.

“I’m not alone,” Bucky mumbles, and rests his head on Steve’s shoulder. Guilt swoops vaguely in his stomach at the brief moment of fear when Steve pulls him in. “I wanna shower,” he says softly.

“You should eat something,” Steve tells him, “Can I make you anything?”

“You don’t have—” He shuts up at the look Steve gives him. “Um. Just pasta, or something. Thanks, Steve.” His voice has gone so quiet. _How_ , Bucky asks himself, _can you even fucking dream those things about him?_

Steve squeezes his hand. “Okay. I’ll be downstairs. I love you.”

“Love you,” Bucky echoes, as Steve leaves and shuts the door. He closes his eyes, cries for another minute, face buried in Penny’s neck as she licks him. Then he sends her out and brushes his teeth and rinses off, scrubbing at the spots where hands had never really been.

He heads downstairs as Steve is finishing the pasta, and hugs him, relieved when his stomach doesn’t flip at the touch. Steve kisses his cheek and sets down a bowl and a glass of water for him, leaning over the island across from him.

“Wanna talk about it?” he asks gently.

“I think I’m losing my fucking mind,” Bucky whispers. He rubs his hands together, then stabs at the pasta. He closes his eyes. “I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Steve says simply, and squeezes his hands. 

“That dream,” Bucky begins, and tears gather in his throat. “It was… it was… fuck.” He drops Steve’s hands and presses his palms against his eyes.

“Do you wanna tell me about it?” Steve asks again, softly.

Bucky’s shoulders turn in, half a shrug. “I don’t know.” He thinks, vaguely, that he tastes whiskey, and he almost gags, but it’s gone in a moment. Instead, he sobs into his hand.

“That’s okay,” Steve reminds him. “Whatever you want, baby. I’m here, okay?”

“Can, um—would you hug me?” Bucky winces at the neediness of it. Without a second of hesitation, Steve crosses around the island and wraps strong, safe arms around Bucky, one hand nestled in his hair, the other in the small of his back. Bucky stifles a sob against his shoulder. This is Steve, this is real Steve. Steve, dropping his late night painting to be there for Bucky. Steve, who will stop touching him the moment he even hints at a no without any questions asked. Steve, always protective but never possessive. Steve who still looks at him the same way he’d looked at him at six and twelve and eighteen, even after Bucky’s been rewired wrong and vile.

Bucky breathes into the embrace. _How dare you_ , a small, angry voice chides him. _How dare you dream about him like that, when all he’s ever done is take care of you because you’re too pathetic to take care of yourself?_

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whimpers, like Steve has a clue what he’s talking about. His arms go tighter around Steve’s neck. Steve squeezes him closer, stroking Bucky’s hair a little.

“Why are you sorry?” He kisses the side of Bucky’s head. Bucky swallows hard, crumbling inwards. He pulls away and leans into Steve’s chest.

“Do you—do you mind if we sleep downstairs tonight?” he whispers. “I don’t, um—the bed is just—”

Steve doesn’t make him explain it. “Yep,” he says easily. “Couch or floor?”

He doesn’t deserve this, he doesn’t deserve Steve, he doesn’t deserve a fraction of this. It sends another sob shivering through him, and when he mumbles, “Floor?” Steve nods and says he’ll get the pillows.

They lie on the floor together later, once Steve has coaxed Bucky into another bowl of pasta and two more glasses of water. Bucky pillows his head on Steve’s chest, curled small against his side, taking a breath as Steve plays with his hair. Their fingers are folded together. Steve’s hands still have some paint flaked on them, and Bucky’s nails are colored pale pink, and Steve untangles their hands to trace I LOVE YOU onto Bucky’s palm. Bucky smiles a little and feels another bubble of inadequacy in his chest.

“It wasn’t how the nightmares usually are,” Bucky whispers finally. Steve doesn’t respond, but Bucky knows he’s listening. “It, um, it’s usually just flashing back but—it started that way, but, um, it changed?” His can’t get his voice to stop trembling. He takes a shaky breath. “It was, um, it was Pierce. When he, um, made me drink.” Back when the trial was in full swing, Steve had been there when Bucky repeated every awful thing Pierce did to him. He knows a lot of those stories. Every week, Alexander might as well have spun a fucking wheel of sadistic things to do to Bucky and decided on one, and he’s told Steve close to all of them. The ones he hasn’t, he doesn’t think he ever will. “But it—it changed, um. After that it was Rollins.” He flinches. Steve kisses the top of his head. This, Bucky hasn’t talked to him about much. For all of the progress he’s made, telling Steve the details of the things that happened to him is so huge, so often unimaginable, shame throttling it out of him before he gets close. _Specifics._ The specifics were ways to put Pierce in jail; anywhere other than that, they’re reminders of the humiliation of what Bucky went through and remnants of leftover fucking pain and an immediate migraine when he thinks about them because if he relives it, it means an inevitable panic attack.

“Baby?” Steve says softly. Bucky blinks. “It’s okay, stay with me, Buck.” He’s rubbing Bucky’s back now. “It’s okay. You’re brave.”

He couldn’t feel further from brave. “Sorry,” he says, because he’d been blanking out for a moment. Steve’s breath catches a little; Bucky can hear _don’t be sorry_ , before he says it. He swallows and curls his fingers against Steve’s chest.

“He, um. I think it was only three times with him.” Bucky’s chest aches at the knowledge that someone raping him three times could be considered not that bad. Steve grimaces, pain flashing over his face. “I—it wasn’t like with um, them, where they were like, threatening me with things.” God, he hates himself. “He just… the two times I went to his, I—I really needed the money.” He closes his eyes. “He made—made me do that too. Drinking. Um. I think he liked that—that I didn’t have, um, any control.”

(Steve thinks back to that night a million years ago when they came across him in the alley, and a hot, furious wave of regret that he’d let him go whites his vision out.)

Trauma begets trauma, Bucky thinks. It comes in pieces, the moments of full clarity understanding how appalling what happened to him really was. Right now, it’s a little clouded by the shame and self hate, but it’s mostly there, and he feels an ache for himself at twenty, not old enough to buy a drink but old enough, apparently, to have alcohol poured down his throat by men who wanted to rape him more easily.

“Buck, I’m sorry.” Steve sounds physically hurt. “God. God, baby. I’m sorry.” He swallows. His voice is heavy with grief.

Bucky swallows. “I dreamt about him, too. Um, flashback–dreamt, I guess.” He closes his eyes. “Then it—god, I don’t know. Changed. It kinda all, um, merged, it—god, it was like they were all fucking there.” His voice breaks. He hates the terror that a nightmare, a dream, an utterly impossible situation can elicit.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Steve says again. Bucky sobs softly. “Sh, baby, you’re safe, you’re safe, it’s just a dream. No one’s gonna hurt you again, I promise. You’re okay, we’re okay, it’s just a dream.”

“Steve,” Bucky whispers, “please, um—please don’t be angry.”

“Buck, I’m never gonna—”

“No.” Bucky shakes his head, pushing himself off of Steve’s chest. Steve sits up, confused, but he stops. “No, just, um—” He curls his fingers into his palm, letting it hurt a little. He deserves that much. “Just… I’m really, really sorry.”

“Buck.” Steve’s voice quivers a little. “Baby, you’re scaring me. I’m not angry, okay? Whatever it is, it’s alright, I promise.”

Bucky nods, but he doesn’t believe it. He stares down. He touches Penny. “In the dream, um, you were there,” he mumbles. “And, just—” He bites his lip, hard. “I know—I obviously know it wasn’t—wasn’t you, but—but—but in it, um, you—you were doing what—what they did to me.” He feels tears caving in on him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“Bucky,” Steve whispers, “you don’t need to be sorry. Baby, baby. I’m not mad.” Bucky looks up, and Steve holds a hand out to him. He takes it and squeezes. “Bucky, I’m sorry—”

Bucky chokes out something trying to be a laugh. “C’mon, Steve,” he says weakly, “I know you like to blame yourself for things, but taking the fall for something a version of you I made up did is a little excessive.”

“Have you had, um, dreams like that before?” Steve asks him.

Bucky bites his lip. “Just one other time.”

Steve swallows hard. “Buck, if I—if I did something to—to make you feel like—”

“You didn’t do anything,” Bucky mumbles. His head hurts. “Rumlow and Pierce started fucking stalking us.”

“It’s okay if I did,” Steve whispers. Bucky shakes his head again, squeezing Steve’s shoulders. Steve glances carefully down, then back up. “Is it ‘cause we’ve, um, started doing more?” Bucky blinks. “You know, physically.”

“Jesus Christ, Steve. No, it isn’t fucking that. I’m not that pathetic,” Bucky snaps. Steve looks taken aback, and Bucky slumps backwards. “Sorry. No, it’s—that’s not it, I—the stuff we do, it—I love that.” He bites his lip. They haven’t even gone past making out, and the thought that that would send him panicking this way makes him lightheaded.

Steve nods. Bucky adds, “Baby, it isn’t you. None of this is you, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve says softly.

Bucky rakes his hands through his hair. “I’m so tired of being controlled by this,” he whispers. His voice quivers. “It’s like they still fucking _own_ me.”

“They don’t,” Steve whispers. “They never did, baby. It’s not gonna feel this way forever.”

Bucky looks down at his hands. His wrist is bruised where Rumlow grabbed him. Steve takes both of his hands and thumbs so lightly over the skin.

Pierce used to hold down on bruises he gave him. If he flinched, he would hit him. If he didn’t flinch, he’d hurt him until he did. Bucky flinches now, and Steve pulls his hands back. 

“I’m so sorry,” Bucky whispers. “I’m sorry about everything.”

“What do you mean?” Nervousness threads through Steve’s voice.

“I don’t know.” Bucky’s voice is burnt through, the words turned to ash. Caking his lungs and then gone. What he means is _I’m sorry every bad thing in your life is because of me and I can’t go a week without freaking out in the middle of the night._ Steve understands through three words.

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Buck,” Steve whispers. “You’re my whole world. You never… you never need to apologize like that, right?”

“You—you deserve—”

“Don’t say I deserve better,” Steve tells him. “There is no better. Not for me, ever.”

Bucky doesn’t argue. He folds into Steve’s arms, small and safe, and kisses his chin because it’s the closest thing he can reach to kiss. 

“This is gonna pass,” Steve tells him, his voice warm and familiar. “I promise.”

***

They go upstate.

Steve finds some Airbnb in Stuyvesant, New York, a pretty house in the middle of nowhere, fireplace and farmhouse out back and pond in the backyard and big windows looking out into trees. It does look nice. It’s such an obvious decision, leaving. It almost feels urgent enough to pack up in the night and take off in the dark, whirl down some highway the way they should have as kids.

It isn’t, however, urgent enough for Bucky to skip therapy, so he doesn’t. He doesn’t say much when he gets home; Steve doesn’t push him. He just hugs him chin fitted above his head, slotted against one another. They fit, Steve thinks, so effortlessly. It wasn’t like this before, when he got Bucky back and they couldn’t exchange a sentence without awkwardness, let alone hug. It took them a moment. It had been like coming home after four years, your key rusted and worn, stuck, at first, but then slipping back into its lock after a moment and turning to open to the revelation that your home is still your home. And now it fits again, without a breath of hesitation.

**

The drive is so good. The drive is the best they’ve felt in weeks. Steve drives. Penny clambors into Bucky’s lap and licks his face and then lays so she’s stretching her paws over Steve’s lap, too, which can’t be safe but Steve is a good driver.

“No, you aren’t,” Bucky says, when Steve says that. “Baby, you’re a terrible driver. You failed your test, what, twice?”

“And passed it the third time,” Steve points out, “which is more than you can say.” He grins. Bucky scowls. 

Steve chooses the music, which makes Bucky actively groan, “God, you’re so old.”

“You like Bruce!” Steve defends himself.

“Yeah, I don’t _exclusively_ like Bruce. You know we listened to this album when we borrowed your dad’s car in high school? Your dad, Steve.”

“It’s timeless! And that was like five years ago, not twenty.”

Bucky snorts. “I hate you.”

“ _Hey, that’s me and I want you only_ ,” Steve croons.

Bucky bites back laughter. “Eyes on the road. You’re such an idiot.”

He sings along thirty seconds later. Steve looks smug.

***

It starts raining about an hour outside of New York.

Hudson is only about three hours away, but they’re sitting in abysmal traffic. The sky is torn open, insistent and heavy against their window, making Penny whine.

“You okay?” Steve asks Bucky softly. Bucky realizes he’s been staring hollowly forward. He blinks. He hadn’t even registered the rain.

“Yeah,” he says softly. There’s a tightness in his chest, his blood moving too fast. He pulls the hoodie he’s wearing (Steve’s) above his neck again. He feels nauseous when he thinks about it.

“You sure?” The car inches forward. 

“Define okay,” Bucky says finally. Steve huffs out something that might resemble a laugh and takes a hand off the wheel to squeeze Bucky’s. Bucky squeezes back, then raises Steve’s hand to his lips and kisses his knuckles. He doesn’t want to talk about Rumlow or Pierce or the impending apocalypse back at home. Instead, he says “You hungry? There’s a diner at the next exit.”

“Sounds good.” Steve smiles over at him, then gives Penny a quick rub. “Will you do the GPS?”

Bucky nods and returns the smile. Breathing becomes fractionally easier.

***

The diner is a little battered tin box off of the highway, one of its lights burnt out so all it says is DI ER. 

Predictably, they’re the only ones in, so they settle into a booth and wait. Steve reaches across the table for Bucky’s hand and squeezes.

“Holy shit,” Bucky says, a moment later, and nods up. Steve turns; he’s pointing at the tv, and Steve startles at their own picture, one from a few months back that he’d put on Instagram. The documentary. Steve grits his teeth; it became, somehow, the least important thing happening. He’d forgotten before even telling Bucky. It’s muted, but closed captioning has the speaker saying “ _—best friends since childhood, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes were inseparable—_ ”

“That’s actually a sweet description,” Steve admits begrudgingly. Bucky looks a little shaken, and he squeezes his hand and says, “You okay? We’ll tell them to change it.”

Bucky nods. “It’s just weird,” he says quietly, rubbing Penny. “It’s hard to get used to that.”

Steve nods. Before he can answer, the waiter shows up, a kid in his early twenties with dyed black hair and a resentful slouch, apparently in charge.

“What’s the service dog for?” he asks coldly.

Bucky goes tense. Steve straightens and shoots him a glare.

“You watching that?” Steve nods at the tv.

“Yeah, that assault case from the summer,” the kid says sullenly. Bucky bites his lip. “That doesn’t—”

“Watch harder,” Steve says pleasantly. Bucky coughs over a laugh.

It takes him a minute, but then his eyes go wide and he clears his throat. “Um,” he says, and winces. “Sorry.”

Bucky grimaces and waves a hand.

The kid stares at them, then back up, then blinks, still utterly taken aback. “Can I, um, get you anything?”

They order, and Steve says “Could you change the channel, please?” and he nods and scurries off to do just that. Bucky runs a hand through his hair.

“We’re gonna have to start offering autographs soon,” he says weakly.

“Not on my watch,” Steve answers, and Bucky rolls his eyes.

They eat, and it’s fine, exactly what you’d expect from a highway diner. Bucky takes Penny for a spin outside while Steve handles the check. As he pays, Natasha texts him a photo of her tv, frozen on one of the courthouse pictures of her, Steve, and Bucky from the day he testified, and adds _How do I get the royalties for this?_

_ha. me and buck are in a diner and it’s on._ Steve replies. Then, tired, _don’t give them the views_.

She writes back, fifteen seconds later, _Are people recognizing the celebs?? U guys are getting portrayed pretty well, if that helps_. And then _It’s really not much. They obviously couldnt get anyone to talk to them. No bombs being dropped here._

Steve takes that as a small, weak success. Nat writes again.

_I’m not saying you should, but if you ever did want to, i bet you guys could be involved in one of these that’s actually pretty good. Like the roman polaski one like smth with actual substance_

_that’s our top priority_ , Steve answers.

_Just food for thought!!!_ she replies. _U know i just want u both to be happy and healthy_

_thanks mom_.

_Oh they got a colleague of p****’s to talk this is getting good better go watch_. 

Steve snorts, then, despite himself, types _what are they saying_.

_He created a ‘hostile work environment’ leading up to the trial. Big shocker there_.

Steve laughs bitterly, then texts, _driving now, talk to you later, love you_.

***

“You sure you’re okay to keep driving?” Bucky asks him later. It’s only eleven, but Steve refused coffee at the diner, and he’s started yawning.

Steve glances over and smiles. “Yeah,” he says. Then, smiling, “Read me something. You haven’t let me read anything you wrote in a while.”

“We’ve been a little preoccupied, if you don’t remember,” Bucky tells him.

“Fair,” Steve replies, “but still. I miss it.”

Even in the dark, he can see Bucky’s cheeks going pink. “It’s different reading it out loud,” he says shyly, “I’m gonna hate how it sounds.”

“Please,” Steve pouts. “It’s still gonna be amazing.” It is, too. Everything Bucky has ever written leaves him breathless. He wants him to know that. “If you don’t, I might fall asleep and kill us all, all ‘cause you wouldn’t let me find out what happens next.”

“Morbid,” Bucky says, but he sighs and digs in his bag for his laptop. “Fine.” Steve grins, and Bucky flips him off as he sorts through documents. He looks so unworldly beautiful, even in sweatpants and five hours into a car ride, squinting at a laptop. God, Steve loves him.

“Okay,” Bucky says, blushing. “Eyes on the road. Don’t watch me do it.” Steve laughs, but listens all the same. “God, okay,” Bucky says again, swallowing. His eyes flicker nervously to Steve’s.

He’s visibly nervous at first, voice shaking, but then he relaxes into the slow, purposeful rhythm of his own voice and story, not even noticing when Steve spends long stretches forgetting to check for turns and just glancing over at him. 

It’s novel length by now, a drama, sort of apocalyptic, sort of science fiction (“But barely,” Bucky had said, when he’d first told Steve about it.) It’s gorgeous, in Steve’s utterly unbiased opinion. The plot, thus far, is that there’s been a rapture of sorts, half the planet, and it takes place three years later. There are three main characters, and the point of view switches off, and he won’t tell Steve what’s gonna happen, but it’s building towards them intertwining. It’s less about what happened and more about the aftermath of it all, the lives of the three people twisted to grief and confusion. It’s dark, and intense, and Steve is, well, raptured by it. Bucky writes in a way that twists into a breathing, writhing thing, so vivid he can taste it, and hearing it in his voice is more than enough to wake Steve up. He interrupts a few times with “God, I love that,” and such, and it makes Bucky smile and then bite his lip self consciously and Steve is just in awe of all of him.

“That’s all?” Steve says, incredulous, when Bucky finishes and looks up. “You’re gonna leave me there?” Bucky grins.

“For now,” he says.

Steve groans. “God. I fucking love it, Buck. It feels unfair to the rest of the world that I get to hear this and everyone else has to live not getting to experience your writing.”

Bucky swats his arm lightly, but he looks elated.

“You could easily get it published, you know,” Steve says.

“Ha,” Bucky replies.

“I’m serious.” Steve takes his eyes off the road to look at him; he’s looking down. “Buck, you’re so, so good.” He means it.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Is this it?” he says, changing the subject, as Steve turns off the road. 

“Yeah,” Steve says, putting the car into park.

It’s a great place, an old, classic country house, several acres sprawling out behind it, a barn and pond in the backyard, sturdy white porch and big living room with a fireplace and a wall looking out into the yard. Not for the first time, Bucky feels a pinch of class discomfort. He hasn’t gotten used to this. He doesn’t know if he will.

New York City feels far, which makes breathing easier. As they get out of the car, Steve throws an arm around Bucky, and he looks up and he can see stars, and weak calm settles over him.

***

They crash immediately, and when Steve wakes up the next morning, he has to blink through the disorientation for a moment. 

It’s later than they usually sleep. The week finally caught up to them, Steve guesses. He climbs out of bed, squeezing Bucky’s shoulder gently, and heads downstairs. Penny follows him with a whine for breakfast.

He feeds her, and digs through the groceries they brought for something that could resemble a decent breakfast, and eventually decides on french toast. Bucky is a great cook; Steve is okay. When he lived alone, his meal prep had been limited almost exclusively to pasta and frozen pizza and scrambled eggs, and he’s upped his game since then, because Bucky deserves to be cooked incredible meals every day. He’s only royally fucked it up a few times, dinners that set off the fire alarm and made Steve look up the poison control number just in case.

He’s good at breakfasts, though, and he figures he’ll bring it up to Bucky, but before that can happen Bucky slips down and props himself in the kitchen doorway, wearing a hoodie of Steve’s and blinking exhaustion from his eyes. Penny jumps up and runs to him for a scratch. He obliges and glances around, takes in the kitchen in daylight.

“Morning, sunshine,” Steve says, and smiles. Bucky rubs his eyes and smiles back. 

“Time is it?” he asks sleepily. Steve stops pouring coffee to stride over and kiss him on the cheek.

“Eleven.”

“Jesus.” Bucky nuzzles against him for a moment, sending contentment sweeping through him. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m glad you slept.” Steve adds Bucky’s cream and sugars and hands him a mug. Bucky smiles again. “How are you?”

“I’m okay,” he says, perching at the counter. “I’m good.” He reaches to touch Steve’s face, and Steve kisses his palm.

“Nice sweater,” Steve says, smirking.

Bucky smiles lazily. “It smells like you.”

“Looks better on you anyway.” Bucky laughs. Steve grins and pulls out a chair to sit next to him. Bucky draws him in, laying his head in the crook of Steve’s neck with a shiver.

“Sure you’re okay?” Steve says, concern lilting his voice. Bucky nods, his face twitching with something quick and troubled.

“You know,” he says softly. Steve touches his jaw and nods. They don’t talk about it, but it’s there, the knowledge of what they’re ignoring, heavy and quivering and filling up more space than it should be allotted.

It’s cold and sharp, air drawn taut with a white, winter glaze that keeps them inside. There’s a town a few miles away, but they’re tired and they brought enough food and the house is nice enough that they don’t especially want to go racing out to some other activity, so they stay. Penny lopes around the yard until she’s tired, and then curls up next to Bucky on the living room floor while he opens his laptop.

He looks beautiful. The fire casts gold over his face, turning his hair lighter, threaded with gold, his eyes shimmering. He’s focused, eyebrows pulled in in concentration, biting his lip a little. Bucky bites his lip working differently than when he’s upset.

“You wanna stay exactly like that for another hour?” Steve asks him.

Bucky looks up and snorts. “Make me some tea, then I’ll model for you as long as you want.”

“On it.” Steve grins and gets up.

“You don’t actually have to make it, I’m not going anywhere!” Bucky calls, but when Steve returns, he’s got a canvas and his paint kit and a mug of tea. “I love you,” Bucky tells him.

Steve digs through the records that the owners had left (“This century, please,” Bucky calls lazily, so Steve flips him off) and they compromise on Amy Winehouse. 

He paints Bucky, like that, legs crossed, fire humming behind him, Penny curled up beside him as he writes. His hair is falling out of the bun. Steve wants to push it back for him, but he wants to paint it like that, so he waits. He loves him so much that sometimes his breath shakes with it.

Bucky looks up occasionally, cheeks going pink, biting his lip. It would take longer to paint it all; the bookshelves behind him, every shade of orange and white and yellow in the fire, the fog clinging to the sliding door; so he takes a photo and focuses on Bucky. 

“Alright.” Steve wipes his face with the back of his hand. “I’m done for now.”

Bucky smiles, getting up to curl into Steve’s lap and tuck himself tight into his arms, head nestled in the crook of his shoulder. “It’s so good,” he says. “You’re so incredible.” It gives him a private, self-conscious rush of adoration when Steve paints or draws him. Like he’s worth making art out of. Not just art, the most beautiful, most breathtaking art in the world, probably. Art that a critic called “in many ways, like reading a love letter from Rogers to Barnes; certainly with the intimacy and delicacy of one” and Bucky, much to Steve’s sheepish annoyance, tacked it on their corkboard. He teases Steve about it all the time, and then Tony came over and saw the amount of Bucky-centric art pieces in the studio and said “Obsessed much, Annie Wilkes?” and Bucky got defensive.

“What can I say, it’s all the model,” Steve says, grinning. Bucky laughs and, arms wound around Steve’s neck, raises himself up to kiss him. Steve folds his arms gently around Bucky’s back and pulls him in. 

“Ugh, paint,” Bucky says, rubbing their noses together.

“You kissed me!” Steve says, and laughs, and Bucky rolls his eyes and kisses him again. “I love you, Buck,” Steve says happily. Their mouths come softly together in between words, lazy and content and warm.

“I love you, Stevie,” Bucky murmurs back. He tugs absently through Steve’s hair. It’s so soft in his fingers, like weaving through sunlight. He’s so happy.

Other people used to kiss Bucky like he had something that they were entitled to, like they could extract it from him, not worrying about what else they dragged out of him. Steve never kisses him like that. Steve kisses him like he’s doing something delicate and purposeful, like if he doesn’t take his time, something will slide out of place and shatter. Steve kisses him and never asks for anything in it, just kisses him. He kisses him the way he paints. The way Bucky writes. Trying to shape something, careful and methodical and beautiful.

He doesn’t want to think about the other men he’s kissed. But Steve is there, and his love is so huge that Bucky can’t see past it right now, so he lets the thoughts fall away enough to kiss him.

“I should shower,” Steve laughs, “before I ruin their house with paint. Wanna come?”

Bucky nods, smiling, and tucks himself under Steve’s arm as they head in. They don’t undress; Steve just starts the water, rinses at the worst of the paint, and smiles at him under the spray.

He kisses Steve, hands resting on either side of his face, under the water. Steve keeps his hands safely above Bucky’s waist, warm and firm on his back, gentle. Bucky loves kissing him. He allows himself a moment of pride and astonishment, that a little over a year ago, kissing anyone was a job at best, something weakly repulsive and utterly disconnected from him, purely physical, and now he can kiss Steve this way and it sends colors pulsing through him. He stumbles a little, his back pressed against the glass, and Steve pulls away but Bucky pulls him back in with a nod. His head and back against the wall doesn’t make him flinch this time. He just kisses Steve, hungry and warm, and Steve kisses him back.

“Ah, god,” Bucky mumbles, after a few moments or minutes or decades of being held and kissed, and Steve pulls back.

“You okay?” he asks carefully, hands light on Bucky’s arms. Cheeks flushed, Bucky nods. He bites his lip hard.

He’s reacted a couple of times, when he’s been kissing Steve, and he’s always made them stop the second he feels anything like that because it’s so, so foreign and terrifying. At the beginning, he’d sometimes, infuriatingly, disgustingly, get hard when guys fucked him, an immediate physical reaction that was utterly out of line with the terror and shame and disgust that would be permanently, endlessly collapsing in his stomach. It stopped eventually; Jennifer told him initially, it was his body responding the way it had known to respond to sex with Steve, and eventually, once it learned that sex was at best, a dull, bearable hurt and at worst, brutalization and dehumanization and torture and terror that rewrote the world in shades of red, it stopped reacting that way. He guesses his getting it back now is a good thing, but all the lines are so crossed and tangled and electrified in his mind when it comes to sex that most of the time, arousal leads immediately to panic and shame.

It’s easy to hide, anyway; he tells Steve to stop, Steve stops. Right now, though, they’re pressed up against each other, and his sweats are soaked through from the water, and he’s very clearly hard, and he buries his face in Steve’s neck to not have to think about it.

Steve looks suddenly awkward. “I could, um. If you—look, feel— _please_ , please don’t feel any pressure at all but, um, I could… help you, with that?” He grins, a little sheepishly. Bucky blinks.

“You—you don’t have to, um, do that—” His cheeks go hot.

Steve shifts his weight; the water may have gone warmer in the last minute. “Would you want me to, though?”

No one was ever very concerned with how he was feeling during sex. Most of the time they didn’t care if he came. Sometimes, they’d think they were doing him a favor if they forced it out of him, always an awful, repulsive, violating addition that Bucky gritted his teeth through while guys talked grotesquely in his ear as if it would get him off until they got some weak, physical thing from him.

Bucky’s heart slams in his throat.

“Sorry,” Steve says quickly; he’s blushing. “Sorry, forget I asked.”

Bucky mumbles, “I don’t, um—I don’t not want you to.” His fingers tremble against Steve’s face. “I just. I don’t know, I haven’t done that in so long.” Steve, in fact, was the last person to give him a blowjob or a decent handjob.

Steve kisses his forehead. “If… if you wanna try,” he says carefully, “we can go really slow.”

Bucky takes a breath. “I don’t—I can’t—I can’t do it to you.” Guilt breaks open in his chest. He tries, for a moment, to be okay with it, but the idea of getting to his knees and doing that, even to Steve, still makes his skin crawl.

“Oh,” Steve says, and sounds surprised. “Yeah, of course, babe. I didn’t expect—” He clears his throat. “That doesn’t matter to me. Whatever you want, Buck. But I wasn’t… I don’t need, like, anything in return.”

It’s awkward, for a moment, both of them looking down, not meeting each other’s eyes, and finally Bucky chokes out a nervous, breathy laugh and Steve does too, and, relief slamming him, Bucky pulls him in closer and touches their foreheads. “I love you,” he whispers, “I trust you.”

Steve smiles down at him; stars blaze behind it. “I love you,” he echoes.

Bucky swallows. “Are you really… you really don’t, um, mind?”

Steve kisses his cheek. “Not only do I not mind,” he says, “I would literally love to.”

So Bucky nods, cheeks flushed, a deep, hot, swoop of excitement in his stomach.

“The second you want me to stop, let me know, just… say it, or push me, or anything, okay?” Steve says. Bucky nods; it gives him a rush of warmth to hear. Steve cares what he wants. 

There is so much love in the way Steve touches him; Bucky had forgotten what it was like for sex to have love. His heartbeat skyrockets when Steve pulls down the waistband of his boxers, but Steve holds his hips, kisses between his thighs so slowly, over the scars there, not to mark him or control him but because he loves him and he wants to kiss his skin, and nothing about the way he looks at him or holds him or touches him is possessive. Bucky feels held. He feels loved. “Is this okay?” he asks, three times, and Bucky nods breathlessly, and Steve’s eyes are impossibly bright.

“W-wait,” he gasps. His hands are light in Steve’s hair, and Steve glances up, ceasing kissing him. “I don’t, um—I don’t wanna, um.” He bites his lip, fights through the shame. This is so, so good. He doesn’t want to ruin it. “Can you… can you not, um, swallow?” It’s a little crude, and he winces, and for a beat, he thinks Steve is going to be appalled.

“Sure,” he says instead, running a hand through his hair so it’s off of his face. “‘Course, baby.” He knows Steve is doing this because he wants to, because he loves him, that it’s not like how it was for Bucky, getting on his knees for some stranger in a parking lot when he was lucky (wanting to die, begging the universe to let it end when he wasn’t), but that was his least favorite thing about giving blowjobs, and he can’t bear the idea of Steve going through that kind of repulsion for him. No matter how little sense it makes. 

“Thank you,” Bucky whispers.

“You sure—you sure this is okay?” Steve confirms with him. Bucky nods, drawing a sharp, aroused breath. Steve grins. “God, Buck, you’re so incredible. So, so, so beautiful. I’m so fucking in love with you.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, his throat thick. It’s the only word worth saying. A warm, safe thrum pulls through him, elicited as much by what Steve isn’t doing as what he is. Even in the way he speaks to him there’s nothing overly explicit, and there’s nothing any of them would ever have said to him, not even _baby_ or _gorgeous_ or any number of things that would have only been said with love by Steve but that he doesn’t say because he knows they weren’t said with love by other people.

God, he loves Steve. He doesn’t know how his lungs and heart don’t give out under the sheer weight of his love for Steve.

Steve doesn’t swallow. Instead, when Bucky tells him he’s close, he gets to his feet and holds Bucky and murmurs, “Okay if I touch you, my love?” And when Bucky says yes, he kisses his neck, light and lovely, even over the place Brock had marked him, kisses him like it isn’t even there, and his hands are so careful and gentle and afterwards, Bucky’s knees nearly give out from it once he pulls his sweats back on, but Steve catches him and kisses his hair and says, “I got you, I love you, I love you, god, Buck, I love you,” and Bucky can’t even get words to reply but even if he could’ve, he thinks _I love you_ would’ve been a poor substitute for whatever the impossible emotion he feels for Steve is, so he just holds onto him as Steve scoops him up against his chest. 

Steve kisses his forehead. “I’m gonna let you get dressed—” he begins, as Bucky realizes they’re in the bedroom.

“You just had my dick in your mouth,” Bucky points out sleepily. Steve snorts.

“I’m still gonna let you get changed, smartass. I’ll be right back.” Steve sets him down carefully. Bucky smiles drowsily up at him and, when he disappears, throws on dry clothes to sleep in and lays down.

Steve takes a bit, and Bucky is about to go find him when he materializes, dry and grinning and with two mugs of something.

“Hot chocolate,” he tells Bucky. Bucky snuggles close to him and takes it.

“Thanks,” he whispers.

Steve kisses his forehead. “How are you feeling?” he asks him softly.

Bucky looks up. “Good,” he murmurs, and smiles. “Warm. Safe.”

Steve smiles like Bucky just said the greatest thing in the world.

“Was it… was it okay for you?” Bucky asks anxiously. He feels sixteen again, lying next to Steve post-first mutual blowjobs, both of them feeling like they’d just won the lottery but still nervous about how it was for each other. There’s a small, tight feeling in his chest, the conviction that there’s only one way for him to be good during sex, quiet and submissive and anonymous, easy to control and mold into what the other person wants. He should probably tell Jennifer that. He makes a note of it, files it under _Ways sex work fucked up my sense of self_.

Steve nods. “Yeah. Yeah, Buck. ‘Was it okay.’ Jesus, I’d say it was okay, yeah.” Bucky shoves him, and he laughs. “Yeah, baby, it was really… I’m just, always, always in awe of you. You’re so goddamn beautiful.”

“Sap,” Bucky says, and kisses his cheek. He snuggles closer to Steve. He smells like peppermint, and Bucky kisses his neck lightly. “I love you,” he says, into Steve’s shirt.

“I love you, too,” Steve tells him, running a hand down his spine, letting it rest in the small of his back.

Bucky weaves himself into Steve’s arms and against his chest. “It’s not even that late,” he says sleepily. Steve hums in agreement.

“Make dinner in a little,” he says vaguely. Bucky nods.

“Can we stay here, first?” he says softly.

Steve threads his fingers through Bucky’s hair and kisses his head. “Yep.”

***

Steve is the one who wakes up in the middle of the night.

He’d half-expected it to be Bucky, shaking and choking down a nightmare, but Bucky stays asleep. He fell asleep on Steve’s chest but he’s lying next to him now, one hand laying on Steve’s stomach, Steve’s arm thrown over his side. Something very much like relief pulses through Steve.

He pulls him closer, kissing his hair, breathing in lavender. Bucky stirs a little, fitting himself snug against Steve, and murmurs something soft that Steve misses. Then they both sleep through the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jessemovie on tumblr
> 
> Thank u angels for commenting i love u all we been knew ive been having a Hard Time but it has been pretty Bad lately and u all are very sweet so i love u


	14. fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here u go warnings for brief talking about abuse

They sleep in. Bucky wakes up first, and stays curled into Steve’s chest, eyes closed, at peace, until Steve stirs and kisses his temple. Then they get brunch in town and spend most of the day there, antique browsing and window shopping. Steve finds an art store that he gets excited about (Bucky finds it very cute) and they spend some time in there. The clerk is rather flustered to be talking to him, (“I drove to New York for your MOMA exhibit, it was amazing”), and Steve buys more paint than he needs to from her and takes a photo.

“Bucky?” she says timidly, just before they leave.

He looks up, surprised. Steve’s arm tightens around his waist.

She clears her throat. “Um. I don’t want—I just wanna say thanks. You, um—I had a trial, last month. It was a similar… you know. And, um, no one… you don’t hear about those happening, a lot. And it helped, knowing that… that other people, um—that I wasn’t, like, alone in, um, pressing charges and… and everything. And it was hard enough, without mine being reported on everywhere in America, so, um. Thank you.”

Bucky takes a breath. “Oh,” he says quietly, stunned. “Um. I—wow, yeah.” He smiles, as much as he can. “I’m, um—that means a lot.” His throat is thick. He’s never thought of any of it in terms of helping other people. His heart ricochets in his chest. “Thank you,” he says, a little hoarsely.

Steve is looking at him with so much warmth and love that it stops time for a beat.

“Thank you,” Bucky says again, and she smiles. “Take care.”

The second they’re outside, tears spill over, but it’s not bad. He leans into Steve, who understands it all, thumbing over his cheeks and kissing his hair and holding him.

They go home, after that; it’s started raining, so they put on a movie with the one DVD the owners have left (“Thelma and Louise is a great movie, Buck!”), and Bucky falls asleep within five minutes, lulled by the sound of the rain and Steve’s hands moving through his hair.

_He’s kissing Steve._

_He’s seventeen, and they’re tangled up in Bucky’s bed. Steve has one hand on the back of his head and the other holding his wrist down, which is doing things to Bucky. He likes that Steve is bigger than him, and he grins and kisses him harder, and god, he’s never going to get tired of doing this with Steve._

_Steve, in a rather impressive movement, flips them so Bucky is lying on top of him, rested on Steve’s chest. He laughs and rubs his nose against Steve’s for a moment; Steve smiles and kisses his._

_“We get it,” Bucky teases, “you can bench a lot, asshole.”_

_“Yeah?” Steve replies, grinning, and shifts so he’s on top again, so fast Bucky doesn’t even have a chance to stop it, not that a fraction of him wants it to stop. He grins up at Steve._

_“Yeah.” He smirks. “Show off.”_

_Steve raises his eyebrows, and grabs ahold of his wrist again, not hard, but holds it above his head and smirks, and god, Bucky is in love with him._

_“Well that’s just not fair,” Bucky says, and laughs. “You’ve got both arms—”_

_“Not my fault, baby,” Steve teases, and kisses him again, and their fingers fold effortlessly together again._

He blinks himself awake. He’s lying somewhere soft, a blanket pulled over him, and it occurs to him a moment later that his head is resting on a pillow on Steve’s lap. He shifts, blinking, and Steve looks down, his eyes going soft.

“Hey, baby,” he says, “you were out.”

“Mm.” Bucky leans against his shoulder, pulling the blanket closer around them. “Dreaming.”

“Bad one?” Steve asks, worried, pushing hair out of his face.

Bucky smiles up at him. “Nice one, actually.” He blinks, sitting up, propping his head against Steve’s shoulder instead. “Did I sleep through the whole thing?”

Steve bites his lip, just for a moment, then shakes his head. “Nah. Turned it off.” Then he gives Bucky a small smile, and Bucky remembers that specific movie and a small, broken rush of gratitude hits him.

“Thank you,” he says softly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Steve replies. “I’m sorry. I forgot that part.” He sounds so guilty.

Bucky shrugs dismissively, and pulls closer to Steve, curling into his lap. He doesn’t want to think about that right now. Instead, he slides a hand down Steve’s arm until he reaches his hand, then weaves their fingers together and squeezes. Steve squeezes back.

Bucky lets his hand go and touches his face. His nails are blue, and next to Steve’s eyes, they match. He traces the curve of his eyebrows, the slope of his nose, until Steve laughs at him and says, “You’re so weird.”

Bucky pouts. “Sh,” he says and touches Steve’s lips, and Steve kisses his fingers. It makes him laugh. 

Steve leans in to kiss him, and Bucky pulls him back in when he goes to leave. He can feel Steve’s lips curled into a smile. It sends a bolt of lightning straight to his heart.

Bucky kisses him deeper, warm and safe. He’ll still never get tired of kissing Steve. Occasionally panicked and triggered by it isn’t the same as tired.

Right now, he isn’t any of those things. He’s just happy.

He wonders, very vaguely, if having one successful sexual experience was the key, if he needed to get over that hurdle to stop freaking out anytime he and Steve try to go a step further than kissing. A year of therapy tells him it’s not, but god, does he want it to be, so badly he’s willing to risk it.

Steve kisses him slowly, almost frustratingly so. Admittedly, it’s him being loving and responsible and careful; he’s leaning over Bucky, a hand cupping the back of his neck, easily more in control. Bucky doesn’t care, though. He leans up and kisses Steve’s neck, quick and heavy, almost frantic. Steve’s breath has quickened, deep and sharp, and he whispers, “ _Buck._ ”

Steve is happy, Steve wants this. The thought gets Bucky to push himself up so he’s straddling Steve’s hips and lean down to kiss him again.

Steve gets it, before he does, that something is wrong. Bucky is shaking, but it’s just anticipation, he’s fine, he’s _fine_ , and so he swallows it and leans down to kiss him again. His hands tremble against Steve’s face.

Steve stops it, first, dodging the kiss and instead, laying his hands over Bucky’s. “Baby,” he says gently, “baby, it’s okay. Breathe, breathe, Buck.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine—”

Steve squeezes his hand. “It is fine,” he says gently. “But we don’t have to, okay?” Bucky goes still, panicked, momentarily, by what he’s saying, terrified he’s done something wrong. Steve takes his real hand and pulls it gently from his cheek, kisses his fingers. “Breathe, baby,” he says softly. “Buck, you’re shaking. I don’t wanna do this when you’re scared.”

“I’m n-not scared,” Bucky whispers, but his voice quivers and it occurs to him that he is, he’s fucking scared even though he has no reason to be, even though all they’ve done here is kiss and Steve wasn’t trying to go any faster. Tears break in his throat, and he shifts off of Steve’s lap and takes a breath.

“I’m sorry I always fuck it up,” Bucky whispers. His head hurts suddenly.

“Baby, you don’t,” Steve tells him, squeezing his shoulder. “I told you, I don’t care how long it takes us to get there, I don’t care if we ever get there, it’s alright. You never need to be sorry.”

Bucky nods, but he’s suspended in that slow, blood-thick anxiety, so he focuses for a moment on Penny. She snuggles close to him while panic rocks him, licking him, tail beating lightly against his knee, until he feels it start to wind down.

“God, I’m _sorry_ ,” Bucky croaks out.

Steve shakes his head. “What do you need right now, Buck?” he says, gentle and patient. 

“Just don’t—don’t touch me, yet, please,” Bucky whispers to the ground. He’s still shaking.

“‘Course,” Steve replies easily. “Can I get you anything, baby?”

“Could—sorry, um—could you not leave?” Bucky’s voice goes, impossibly, smaller.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Steve tells him. And he doesn’t. He sits, a few safe inches left between them, leaned against the couch as Bucky calms down, forcing himself to bring his hands away from his shoulders, uncurling himself enough to dull the shaking.

“Can I lean on you?” Bucky whispers finally.

Steve smiles so warmly that sobs clot Bucky’s chest again. “Yeah, babe.”

So Bucky does, with a shudder, and Steve wraps an arm around him and rubs his shoulder. He’s too tired and too flushed with shame to cry, and he just lets Steve soothe him, soft and so, so patient.

“I’m sorry,” Steve murmurs, after a few minutes. 

Bucky snaps his head up. “God, no. Please, please don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault I’m so—” He cuts himself off at the look Steve gives him. “It’s not your fault,” he repeats, quieter.

Steve swallows. “I don’t wanna pressure you—”

“You didn’t pressure me.” Bucky’s voice is still trembling, but it’s the truth. “Steve, I wanted to. I initiated it.”

“Last night—”

“It wasn’t last night,” Bucky says stubbornly. He’s so frustrated, so impossibly furious that the world is snatching this back from him, the one thing he’s been able to reclaim in the last backbreaking nine months of trying to get better. “Last night was great, I liked that. I loved it. I promise.”

Steve looks unconvinced. “I don’t—I didn’t want to make you feel like—like now that’s the norm. Just cause it happened, um… I don’t… we can still wait as long as you want for the next thing. Or to do it again, okay?”

Bucky nods, then draws a shaky breath. Steve got it, somehow, before even Bucky did.

“Last night was so good,” he begins softly. “I don’t… I don’t regret it, okay, Steve? You made it so good.” Steve smiles and nods and squeezes his hand. Bucky’s chest constricts. “But is it okay if we, um, don’t do it again for a little while? Any, um, sexual stuff.” He swallows, and feels Steve take a sharp breath, and before he can say anything else, he whispers, “It was good, it was… it was so good, Steve. And it made me feel good and safe and just… you were perfect. I just… I’ll feel, like, um. I don’t know, just wrong, if we—if you do that for me, but I can’t for you.”

Steve is quiet for a moment. “Of course it’s okay, Buck,” he says. “If you don’t want to, we don’t do it. I just—it’s—I don’t feel like you’re, like, using me if—” He clears his throat. “If what you’re worried about is like, me being upset that you’re comfortable with some things but not others, that’s not… I don’t think of it like that, ‘kay?”

“I know,” Bucky whispers, and he does. “I just… I’ll feel like that.” He swallows. “And, um, I just… I wanna… I wanna be, um, ready, but… but I’m not sure if I am. To, um, do that stuff all the time.” There’s a moment of shame, but overwhelmingly, all he feels admitting it is relief. He doesn’t have to pretend to Steve, doesn’t have to pretend to himself. He shuts his eyes.

“Okay,” Steve says simply. “Okay, then we’ll wait. The only thing that matters is that you feel safe, and in control, okay?”

Bucky nods, squeezing closer to him. Maybe, he thinks, the reason he got so, so, so unlucky for four years was because all the luck he’d ever deserve in the world was rolled up into Steve, endlessly good even when he’s unworthy of it. Especially then.

“I still wanna kiss you,” Bucky says quietly. “It’s not… not that. Just, um, the other stuff, that I don’t know if I’m ready.” 

“Got it,” Steve says gently. “Thank you for telling me, baby.” He kisses Bucky’s hair.

There’s still a weak current of panic shooting through Bucky’s chest, spillover from before, spillover from the last five years. He closes his eyes and forces a breath, drags out the heavy, exhausting reminders that it’s okay, that he doesn’t owe Steve or anyone sex, but a small, cruel voice sneers, _You’ll let him do that for you and you’re still going to be a prude?_ Which is a new addition to the already momentous crescendo of noise telling him he does, in fact, owe Steve something.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers. His throat has swelled shut. He knows Steve is going to tell him not to be, but he can’t stop it this time. He’s so tired of pushing and pushing and pushing up against these beliefs, ( _harmful, reinforced warped views_ , he hears Jennifer say) only to have them collapse in on him again. It’s still there, even if he’s not getting on his knees in their kitchen the way he was last year ( _Slut_ , he thinks, and bites his cheek until it hurts). He wants it to be easy, or at least fucking stable, not this awful, oscillating swing back and forth of what he can handle that not even he can get a grip on.

“Buck…” Steve begins, his voice pained.

“I just…” Bucky closes his eyes, suddenly so tired he’s dizzy, the bravery sucked out of him. “I’m sick of—of sex being this thing that—that they control, for me.” Shame buzzes hotly under his skin. “I’m sorry that we—that I—that instead of being a normal twenty-three year old, you have to deal with… with me making you stop and freaking out when we kiss and never being able to do that with you.” It drained all of him, saying that. He feels wrung out. 

There’s a moment of strained silence. Then Steve says simply, “I’m not.”

Bucky looks up.

“I’m not sorry,” Steve says, “about any of that.” He pauses, stroking Bucky’s hair, holding his gaze. “Before, I had sex, and I didn’t have you, and I was miserable. And now I have you, and we’re taking it slow, and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. Pretty easy choice, there.”

The cruel parts of Bucky’s brain, the ones that have hardened to steel over the last four years, won’t accept that. The words, though, are so gentle that even Bucky can’t make himself reject it completely. He lets it wash over him, soothing the ache in his chest a bit, and he rests his head on Steve’s shoulder in lieu of a response. Steve gets it. Steve combs his fingers through Bucky’s hair and kisses the top of his head, and stays with him, keeps him warm and held, the rain insistent and rhythmic against the glass.

“Steve?” Bucky whispers.

“Yeah, Buck?”

“I love you.”

Steve takes a breath. “I love you, too, baby. I love you so much.”

***

Steve wakes up the next morning to Bucky pressed close against him, warm and secure. Sometimes when he wakes up next to Bucky, a rush of relief comes over him that he’s still there, that he hasn’t been swept up by distance or snatched away by Alexander Pierce. There’s still a cold bite of fear that grips him when he thinks about losing Bucky. He thinks about those four years and he can’t comprehend how he got through them. Everything seems less bearable when you’re on the other side of it.

He bites back sadness thinking about last night, about Bucky saying _I don’t know why I always think I can handle it, and then I can’t._ Steve can’t think of an effective response that isn’t “Because for three and a half years you were raped and abused by monsters.”

 _I’m sorry I always fuck it up._ As if he owed Steve that. As if Steve were waiting.

Steve kisses Bucky’s forehead and slips out from under the covers, pulling it back over him as he gets up. He throws on sweats and a hoodie and writes Bucky a quick note that says _out for a run, back in like an hour. Love you more than anything on earth_. Then, a moment later, he changes his mind and grabs another piece of paper.

***

Steve isn’t there when Bucky wakes up, probaby jogging. It gives him a small, content feeling that his first thought when he wakes up alone, these days, is no longer that he’s left him forever. Jennifer would call it progress. He guesses that he would too.

Steve left him a note that says he’s jogging and he’ll be back in an hour and he loves him more than anything on earth. Bucky smiles, then notices he’s also left him a drawing. He picks it up.

 _Things that matter in our relationship_ , he’s written, and below it, a circle that takes up most of the page. Bucky blinks, and reads the things he wrote inside the circle.

_  
Making waffles in the middle of the night_

_Taking baths with you_

_Making each other laugh_

_When I fall asleep holding you and I wake up and I’m not holding you anymore so I can pull you in again_

_How it makes me feel when you smile at me_

_The fact that we always just fit_

_When we’re in the studio and I look over at you writing and I wonder how the hell I got so lucky_

_How much we’ve been through together and how strong we are_

_How strong YOU are (gets its own bullet)_

_How we like all the same music even if you make fun of me for having the music library of a middle aged man_

_How we know each other from the tiniest change in expression or movement_

_How I love you more than anything and I’ve loved you through every part of my life and will love you through every part of my life, and getting to love someone like that must be the rarest and best thing in the world_

Off to the side, so small Bucky doesn’t see it at first, he wrote _sex_.

Bucky’s breath has locked itself in his throat. He reads it over again, then folds the note and presses it to his lips like he’s trying to inhale it, like he wants to keep the words close. No one has ever been loved the way he is by Steve. The wonder of it fills his chest. It’s so soft, this love, spun out of light from the first star there ever was. He feels, for a moment, enveloped in it. He loves Steve so infinitely and massively that sometimes he doesn’t even think about it, but when he does, it takes his breath away, the enormousness of his love. And Steve loves him right back. No matter if Bucky deserves it or not, Steve loves him so fiercely and so softly.

He reads it again, brushing at tears, then tucks it into a small pocket in his bag. When Steve gets back, he can’t find the words, so he wraps his arms around his neck and holds him and hopes he can pour the unimaginable emotion out from his soul into Steve’s.

The way Steve holds him back, he thinks he does.

***

The next three days are so beautiful that not even Bucky can find a way to ruin them. They stay home, cooking and sleeping in and going for hikes with Penny, or they go into a town for lazy breakfasts and walk, hands clasped, ducking into little shops and laughing.

The fourth night, they make a big deal of preparing stuffed tomatoes and baking bread and drinking orange juice out of wine glasses and embellishing it all with a picnic blanket in front of the fireplace. Lights dimmed, soft music in the background. Steve chooses the record. Talking Heads this time, and Bucky laughs and says, “You’re so close to normal music, babe,” but then relents because he likes this album.

They did this once in high school, in Steve’s considerably less nice living room when his parents were out, spread out a meal on the ground with a sheet as their blanket and cooking pasta. They hadn’t had a fireplace, then, so they’d used the fake, battery powered candles Steve’s mom had. That was days before it all happened. They made love, artificial light glittering around them, and then lay there, bodies close and warm in the dark, talking about the future, and Bucky didn’t know that was the last time he’d have sex and want to do it.

Right now they kiss, and that’s all they do. After a little bit, Bucky settles against Steve’s chest, laying between his legs, a sigh settling indefinitely between them. Bucky shivers at nothing and Steve holds him closer. _This Must Be The Place_ is still soft in the background. Neither of them move to stop it.

“There are things I haven’t told you,” Bucky whispers, and swallows. “Lots of stories.”

“I know,” Steve says softly. He folds his fingers over Bucky’s and squeezes. “And I’m here for when you’re ready.”

“There’s more than you think,” Bucky whispers. His throat feels thick. “Even about… even about Alexander. Just… things that I—” He breaks off before his voice can crack. Everything feels unbearably heavy.

_—Home, is where I want to be but I guess I'm already there—_

Steve doesn’t pull away. “That’s okay,” he says softly. “You can tell me now, or you can tell me tomorrow, or you can tell me ten years from now.”

“There are things,” Bucky begins softly, turning his shoulders in a little. “There are things that are just so fucking humiliating and disgusting and I just… it’s stuff that I don’t—I’m scared, um. It’s just really bad. It’s really, really bad.” He doesn’t say, _Not even you could look at me the same if you knew_ , because he doesn’t want to hurt Steve, but it’s there.

“Baby,” Steve says softly, his voice soothing and warm, like tea with honey, like waking up beside him to the smell of peppermint. “I’m with you. Nothing that happened to you will ever make me love you any less. I’m here forever, okay?” Bucky shudders and leans his head back against Steve’s shoulder. “You don’t have to tell me now, okay? You don’t even have to tell me, ever. But I’m here when you want to, and I’ll be here after you do.”

He closes his eyes. His body feels settled against Steve’s, their hearts rooted next to one another so that the bodies that grew around them were meant to fit.

The things Steve doesn’t know are the things that don’t get discussed ever, not even in the PTSD books Bucky has looked at until his head hurt, barely ever in some of the memoirs or articles by other survivors. He’s only told Jennifer some of them, things that saying aloud made him feel like something less than human, less than anything, and received gentle, firm reassurance that it wasn’t his fault, that the shame of it wasn’t on him. He still finds it impossible to believe, when it comes to the really disgusting things.

“Alexander, um.” Bucky closes his eyes, feeling suddenly nauseous. “Made me sick once. Um. He made me drink, and I—I got sick. And then—” Bucky bites his cheek. If Steve stopped holding him, he might collapse inwards with shame. “He, um. Shoved me in it.” He doesn’t know how he doesn’t crumble under the disgust. It burns him, flaring through every inch of him, hissing and flickering and twirling in his chest until the binds holding him in place unspool and he falls to pieces. The words are unimaginably heavy.

“He once, um, made me, um, kneel—kneel under cold water, j-just so he could watch.” Bucky’s breath hitches with terror. “Just—just fucking humiliating control things. And it—god, it feels so fucking disgusting.”

Steve doesn’t recoil or push him away or tell him he’s repulsive. Instead, he kisses his shoulder, and then up to his cheek, and then his forehead. 

“I’m still here,” Steve whispers. 

Bucky exhales, his breath fragile.

_—I'm just an animal looking for a home and share the same space for a minute or two and you love me till my heart stops, love me till I'm dead—_

He cries and trembles for a few beats, and Steve holds him, so steadily, as if he’s utterly certain that the universe meant for him to be here, holding Bucky through his shivering and sobbing. 

“Buck,” Steve says to him, so, so gently. “Baby, what those people did to you will never in a million years change how I see you. It wasn’t your fault.” Bucky, suddenly, sobs harder, burying his face in Steve’s shirt.

“You ever tell Maria any of that?” Steve asks him softly, just wondering.

Bucky swallows and shakes his head. “I’ve talked to Jennifer about it. I—I _couldn’t_ say that in front of a jury.” He can barely say it now.

Steve just nods. 

“I don’t—” Bucky swallows. The words feel dry and huge. “I don’t want to be seen, that way.” Steve is quiet, waiting for him to elaborate. “Everytime someone looks at us, they see the things I used to do, and they see all those fucking headlines talking about what—what Alexander did. And—I used to be used to that. Just being seen as a prostitute, or a slut, or a homeless kid with one arm, and watching people look the other way. But I just—it’s different, now, ‘cause I don’t—I don’t want to be that, anymore.” His voice has gone very quiet. “And being told that stuff, from Brock, and Ross, and from fucking Zemo, I just—it hurts. It feels truer than ever, kind of. Like I’m just pretending. And I don’t—a year and a half ago, if I had thought I’d be here, with you, in a house that looks like this, that would’ve been literally the most impossible way things could have ever gone for me. And it still—I don’t know how I’ll ever feel like I deserve it. And so people saying things that confirm that, it really, really gets to me. Even fucking Loki, trying to like, commodify it all. So more people can look at us, and decide those things. And it’s rubbing off on you. I can’t take that.”

“You aren’t those things,” Steve whispers. Clearly, he’s been bursting to say it. “You’re not, Buck. I hate so much that anyone has ever made you feel that way. You deserve everything. You deserve to know that you’re wonderful, Bucky.”

Bucky sighs quietly. The words settle in his chest and turn over, suspended in purgatory, as his brain decides whether or not to accept them. 

“You never did that, you know,” Bucky says softly.

“Did what?”

“Made me feel looked at like that. Last year, you never—you looked at me, and talked to me, and touched me, and it was like—it was like I was someone else. And you always did that. Even when we were little kids, and I went back to school—do you remember this?—I went back to school after the amputation, and people were staring, and saying things, and everyone made me feel weird, ‘cause kids are idiots. And we used to play four square at recess, and obviously, I couldn’t, and you stayed with me, but you never made it a big deal. You just said you wanted to do other things, even though I know for a fact four square was your favorite, ‘cause it was the only sport you could play back then.” Steve snorts. Bucky squeezes his hand. “I mean, my _parents_ made me feel weird, and… whatever, useless, pitied. But you didn’t. You just… you did so much for me, that year, and you never made it into anything. We had pancakes at your house, once, and your mom got totally panicked ‘cause you were cutting yours, but I couldn’t do mine, and she didn’t wanna be, like, whatever. Draw attention, I guess. But you cut yours, then said there were too many blueberries, and switched with me before anyone could do anything. You did those things all the time.”

“I don’t remember that,” Steve says. There’s a smile in his voice.

“I do,” Bucky whispers. He brings Steve’s hand to his lips; his skin is warm. “This entire last year, you’ve done it, too. I don’t know how you managed to not—not see all those other things. Even that first day. I mean, god, Steve, do you remember what it was like right at the beginning? You were freaked, but you never, ever made me feel like I was just… all of the things that I was.”

“‘Cause I’ve loved you for eighteen years,” Steve says simply, and kisses Bucky’s shoulder. “And—and I see so much, when I look at you, Buck. Everything we’ve ever done together, every time you’ve made me laugh, every time you made me feel safe enough to cry in front of you, every good day. And when I see that, there’s no room for the other things that aren’t you, not really.”

“I should’ve called you,” Bucky whispers. Steve tenses, like he’s surprised. Bucky is surprised. “After, um, _converting._ ” They’ve never talked about this, really. Conversion camp is another thing there between them, marked off in red tape, that Steve will never bring up. Bucky has so many stories that would have been, for anyone else, the worst thing that ever happened to them, things that for him, constitute just one more Bad Thing. He’s one of those Russian dolls for trauma. At least no one had been raping him there.

“Why didn’t you?” Steve asks softly. He isn’t accusing him. He’s asking, trying to understand, trying to feel his way around Bucky’s scorched soul.

“I thought—I thought you’d hate me, after everything.” He swallows. His mouth is dry. He’s barely even talked to Jennifer about this; it comes up, sometimes, when they discuss his parents. She told him he blocks it out, that it’s the root of so much of the shame and self hate he still lives with. “I mean, they really… they made me _hate_ everything about myself, Steve.” His eyes well with tears, suddenly. “I thought if you even looked at me, after, you’d see it too.”

“Baby,” Steve says, softly, sadly.

Bucky gives a small shake of his head. “Would’ve saved us both a lot of fucking pain.”

They’re quiet, for a moment. Penny’s breathing is loud and even; it makes them both smile.

“What did they do to you, there?” Steve asks him, so softly.

Bucky closes his eyes, folding himself smaller in Steve’s arms. “What you’d expect.” His voice shakes. “I mean… there’s no fucking way it was legal. It was all pretty underground, I think. But you know. Telling you how disgusting you are. Made you watch porn and like—they had these injections, they’d give you, so you’d throw up during it.”

“Jesus,” Steve whispers.

“That’s what they pushed,” Bucky replies weakly.

Steve chokes out a startled laugh. Bucky presses tighter to him. 

“Exorcisms,” he adds quietly. “They’d hit you for mouthing off. Make you confess stuff. They had a field day with the missing arm.” Jennifer has called him out on slipping into second person when he describes trauma. He can’t say _me_ or _I_ right now, though. Having that in relation to him is unbearable.

Steve kisses the back of his head, holding him closer. Bucky exhales and presses back against him. They listen, for a long time, to each other breathing, to the last whines of the record, to crickets outside, soft and effortless, the world thrumming around them.

“I lived in that apartment, for a little while,” Steve says quietly, breaking the silence. “Sam’s cousin’s. The one we were gonna move to.” A pause. “It was awful. All I did was miss you.” Another, quicker pause. “All I did was miss you after I moved, too.”

Bucky closes his eyes. “Tell me about it. The apartment.”

Steve laughs, soft and surprised. “It was tiny. The hot water barely worked. It was right under a train track, so it was loud all the time. Downstairs neighbors fought constantly. Sam’s cousin was really good, though. He let me skip a bunch of month’s rent. It was before I was working, like, at all. I just got drunk there during the day and slept.”

Bucky swallows. “We would’ve been happy there.”

“We would’ve,” Steve says, and he sounds suddenly sad.

“We would’ve showered together to conserve the hot water.”

“Mhm. You probably could’ve charmed the neighbors into shutting up, everyone likes you.”

Bucky scoffs, and goes on, “We would’ve gotten shitty little jobs.”

“Yeah. Or kept our old ones.”

Bucky hasn’t thought about his high school job in ages. A bookstore in Park Slope, with a sweet old couple who owned it and didn’t care when Steve hung around all through his shift. “Did Mrs. Pym ever know I didn’t just quit on her?”

“Yeah. I went and cried all over her afterwards explaining it.”

Bucky squeezes his hand. “We’d have fought about paying rent,” he goes on quietly, “and then realized that we weren’t actually mad at each other and made up and figured out a way to scrape the money together.”

“We’d have had to decide between heating and electricity for the month,” Steve muses, “and obviously, we’d choose electricity, ‘cause we’d just cuddle up when it got cold.”

“Sometimes we’d splurge on bad Chinese food, if we got a lot of tips that week.”

“We’d spring for scallion pancakes,” Steve says, and they both laugh weakly.

“Beg Sam’s cousin to let us pay next week.”

“He was so nice, he’d always have said yes.”

“Worry about buying each other Christmas and birthday presents.”

Steve chokes out a laugh. “We’ll never have to worry about that now,” he says softly.

“No, we won’t,” Bucky agrees. Just other things, like which ex-abuser is stalking them.

“Maybe there’s a universe out there where it worked,” Steve says softly. “And we’re living in a shitty Brooklyn apartment scraping rent every month.”

“You don’t believe that,” Bucky says. Even if his parents hadn’t bulldozed through everything they had, it had been a terrible plan. Naive and beautiful and utterly idiotic.

“No, I don’t,” Steve answers. Bucky laughs.

“I don’t like that,” Bucky says quietly, shifting so he can glance up at Steve from in front of him. “‘Cause with that logic, there’s a universe out there where we didn’t find each other last year.”

“Well, shit,” Steve says. Bucky hums in agreement, slots their fingers apart and together again. “I think we find each other no matter what, every time. Sometimes it just takes a little longer, maybe.”

Bucky kisses Steve’s jaw in response. “Oh, stubble,” he says, surprised, laughing. He hadn’t noticed before.

Steve grins. “Yeah, what do you think?”

“I like it,” Bucky laughs. “Very rugged of you.”

Steve kisses his nose. “That’s me, baby.” Bucky sighs contentedly and closes his eyes.

“Buck?” Steve says softly.

“Hm?”

“I need you.” His voice is thick, suddenly. “I don’t know what I’d do, if I lost you. I don’t know how I did it before, but I couldn’t now.”

 _I need you._ The words make Bucky feel selfishly loved. Some days, when he needs to be held and rocked and comforted by Steve, his own neediness overtakes him and he feels unbearably selfish, but Steve needs him right back. Steve was alone and miserable and hollowed out, and Bucky came back into his life and reshaped it and Steve was home again. It’s not a happy thought, exactly, but being needed makes him feel so loved and important and full of worth that he drinks the words in.

“I need you, too,” Bucky whispers finally, nuzzling against his neck. “You know you’ll never lose me.” He said that once before, in high school, and fate had sneered at them, but right now, he clings to Steve with such fervor that they both believe it. They’ve paid their dues for loneliness and misery.

It aches, a little bit, to know that even with their entire lives together spilling out in front of them, waiting for them, they were still robbed of four years together. He’ll never get to know Steve at most of nineteen or twenty or twenty-one or half of twenty-two. It’s a tragedy, what happened to them. Bucky hadn’t known so much tragedy could come down upon two people.

He breathes, though, and squeezes Steve’s hands to be sure he’s still there. Steve squeezes back to tell him he is.

***

Steve knows at some point, they have to go home and face things. Brock and the restraining order hearing that’s been pushed back two more weeks, Alexander and whatever he’s doing, the fact that Steve may or may not be a wanted person in a case he, for once, has nothing to do with.

There’s almost a part of him, desperate and wild with hope, that thinks they could live like this. Sheltered and alone, cooking together and spending days and nights tucked together beside a fireplace, Penny asleep beside them, snowed safely in through winter until it thaws away and surrounds them with sunflowers, slipping out occasionally into a village where no one stares at them or asks if they’re the couple from the case last summer or stalks them. He’s never wanted to live anywhere but a city but right now, the thought of returning to New York makes his head hurt. 

“Hey,” Bucky says, startling him out of it. He turns; he’s leaning in the doorway, subdued. “You okay?” He walks towards him and hugs Steve from behind, chin propped on his shoulder, so they can both look out at the snow. A thin, fragile layer of it coats the grass now, glittering weakly.

“Yeah,” Steve says, and kisses Bucky’s arm; he laughs. “Should we just buy a farm and run it together?” Steve asks, grinning and half joking. Bucky kisses his shoulder and hums thoughtfully.

“Yeah. Just disappear on everyone.” He smiles. So does Steve.

“Penny would be into that, we get a bunch of horses and sheep—”

“ _Brokeback Mountain_ it,” Bucky adds, and Steve makes a face.

“Do you not remember the end of that movie?”

“Yeah, and I remember that they both get married, that wasn’t the point—”

Steve laughs, shaking his head. “Learn how to grow crops, and stuff.”

Bucky nuzzles against his neck, smiling. “Learn pottery, or something, I don’t know.”

They’re quiet for a moment, running through the hypotheticals. “I think you like your expensive New York coffees too much,” Steve informs him.

Bucky snorts. “One of us toughed it out on the streets for four years. I could make it without coffee.” He’s smiling, though, and Steve smiles too, weaving their fingers together. “We’d miss our friends,” he adds.

“Our therapists,” Steve offers.

“Fucking true,” Bucky laughs. Steve turns around to face him, pulling him in, arms secure around his waist. Bucky cups his face, eyes going soft. “You’d miss your gallery this week, is what you’d miss.”

Steve groans. The New York Times art section marketed it as “Rogers’ first public and professional appearance since his involvement in the Alexander Pierce case this summer” and Steve had snapped a pencil reading it. It’s a big one, his own exhibit at the Met, running indefinitely. It will inevitably be flooded with reporters less interested in the art and more interested in how they’re faring four months after their near death experience got splashed on the front page of every publication in New York.

“We should skip it,” Steve says. Bucky rolls his eyes.

“We aren’t skipping it, this is your biggest ever—”

“Everyone is gonna be a pain in the ass,” Steve says. 

“Fuck them,” Bucky says. “You should be proud of this.”

Steve smiles down at him. “Okay,” he says, begrudgingly.

Bucky smiles. “Good.” Steve glances down at where their hands are locked together and kisses his fingers.

“I don’t wanna go home,” Steve admits.

“Me either,” Bucky says softly, and swallows. “We have to, though.”

“I know,” Steve sighs. 

***

Even though it’s brutally cold, they go out into the yard that night and look at the stars. Penny bounds happily across dead grass, swinging back to sniff at Bucky before loping away again, and Bucky leans his head on Steve’s shoulder to look up at the sky. He’s always surprised by the stars outside of the city, endless and eternal, like someone scattered them in heaping handfuls a million years ago and they took root in the sky.

He doesn’t realize Steve is looking at him for some time, and then he blushes and looks away.

“What?” he says, a little shyly.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” Steve says, smiling.

“I’m with you every day.”

“And every day I’m glad for that.”

Bucky pushes on tiptoes to kiss him.

“Hey,” Steve says when they pull apart, grinning. “Walk out on the ice with me.”

“You trying to get us killed?” Bucky asks him. Steve grins. “Steve, please, please don’t die falling through ice.”

Steve laughs and loops an arm around Bucky’s waist. “Hang on—” He kicks in the grass for a moment, then comes up with a rock. Bucky raises an eyebrow, and Steve takes a few steps forward and hurls it against the ice.

“No cracks,” Steve says smugly, “that means it’s safe. C’mon—” Against his better judgement, Bucky rolls his eyes and lets Steve pull him on.

“Penny, stay,” Bucky tells her, and she perches obediently on the side of the pond, panting happily. 

It’s started to snow again, feeble and temporary, dissolving on their skin. Steve grins at him, wrapped in bright white, the snow and the stars and the ice, glistening spectacularly, his eyes lighter than usual. Bucky shifts carefully on the ice to wrap his arms around Steve’s neck, laughing, breath fogging briefly in the air before sweeping itself away. 

“Can I kiss you?” Steve asks.

“You know you can kiss me,” Bucky laughs.

“Wanted to check,” Steve says, smiling. Bucky kisses him before he can move in. It’s so cold that their lips are almost numb, and the kiss unthaws them a bit, raw, chilled skin brushing clumsily. He tastes the cold and the stars.

“I’m cold,” Bucky says when they break apart, shivering for good measure. Steve laughs and rubs his hands up and down Bucky’s arms.

“Bath?”

Bucky nods, smiling, leaning against him a little to tread hesitantly off of the pond.

It’s not as big as their bathtub at home, but they still fit comfortably. Bucky folds his legs over Steve’s lap and lays his head on his shoulder, letting the feeling of Steve’s hands working gently through his hair wash over him. He doesn’t know how he managed to live four years without this. He doesn’t know how he managed to live a day without this. Sometimes, Steve touches him with so much gentleness that Bucky thinks it’s the thing that’s holding him together, steady strings keeping his broken pieces in place, and if Steve stopped touching him, he would come unraveled.

Sometimes people fucked him in the bathtub. There had been one guy who he’d seen for a few months who would rub him down with a washcloth until his skin was raw before fucking him. He’d been nineteen at the time, and the guy had liked that, had simpered, grotesquely, _sweet little boy, so perfect and innocent, so good for daddy, hm, letting me fuck you however I like_ , and he paid extra so Bucky let him. Then he met Pierce and he’d show up with a new mosaic of bruises on his skin every time and the guy had been enraged that he wasn’t the only one fucking him however he liked.

“Buck?” Steve says softly. Bucky blinks and realizes he’s crying. He swallows and closes his eyes. He’s here with Steve, dressed and safe, unpolluted and unthreatened.

“Sorry,” he whispers. Steve gives him a long look. Bucky coughs. “You know what I mean.”

Steve tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. “What is it?”

It takes him a moment to retrieve the words. “I’m scared,” Bucky says softly.

“I’m not gonna let them hurt you,” Steve says, warm and safe and firm.

 _It’s not up to you_ , Bucky thinks, but he doesn’t say it. Steve’s arms are so safe, so he lets himself focus on that. However illusionary it is, he feels protected right now.

Steve swallows. “Why’s he doing this?” he says quietly. He doesn’t have to say the name. Alexander’s presence is so heavy and constant that they both know.

“‘Cause he hates us. ‘Cause he hates me, and he’s furious.”

“But from prison?”

“What difference does it make to him?” Bucky says weakly. “It’s either this or sitting there and waiting to die.”

“How the fuck is he getting away with this?” Steve says darkly. “I mean, how has no one reported it or noticed?”

It jogs something, a sliver of a memory, so small Bucky can’t be sure he didn’t remember it wrong. Bucky sits up so fast Steve startles. “Rumlow’s ex-wife, Sharon Carter,” he says quietly. “She didn’t testify.” Steve raises an eyebrow and nods. “Do you think he… they threatened her, or something? Bribed her?”

Steve straightens up. “You think they’d—you think they’d do that?”

Bucky blinks. “Would they do that? No, they’re above that.”

Steve huffs out a laugh. “I meant would they be able to do that without getting caught?”

Bucky leans back against his chest; Steve’s heartbeat has sped up. His own is off the charts. “I don’t know. It’s gotta be pretty easy, right? She’s got a baby now. Zola doesn’t strike me as caring about witness intimidation.”

“Jesus,” Steve breathes. “Who, then? Brock, Pierce, Zola?”

“Gotta have been Zola,” Bucky says vaguely. “Or a friend. They’d have both been in jail, when that happened.”

Steve closes his eyes. “So Pierce is in jail, he’s raging and he wants revenge.” Bucky shivers. “He offers to pay for Rumlow’s appeal or whatever if he gets out and starts harassing us, maybe. He knows they won’t win if the wife testifies—”

“Sharon,” Bucky reminds him quietly. It feels important.

Steve nods. “Sharon. So they threaten her, or bribe her, and he gets out and then Rumlow starts… doing that.” Steve swallows. “You think he… fuck, you think he was gonna, like, put a hit out on us?” His voice shakes. Steve rarely sounds scared like this.

Bucky presses his face into Steve’s neck for a moment. He’s shaking. Steve runs a hand down his back. “If that’s really what he… what he was gonna do, he wouldn’t have used Brock.”

Steve relaxes a little at that. “You’re right.”

The water laps at the sides. Steve traces his fingers in circles over Bucky’s shirt.

“If he threatened her,” Steve says quietly, “and she reported it. That’d put him in jail.”

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers.

Steve swallows. Everything feels heavy and important, every movement, every word. “Should we ask Carol if she’s said anything? Or if she can ask her or—fuck.”

“Yeah,” Bucky repeats wearily, because without Steve saying it, he knows. He knows this isn’t cut and dry, that they can’t barrel into a woman’s life asking her to report her abusive ex-husband so he can stop stalking them.

Steve says thickly, “I will say, that if he’s doing this to us… it wouldn’t shock me, if he’s… going after her, too.”

Bucky nods, and squeezes Steve’s arm. “It won’t hurt to just mention it to Carol.”

“No,” Steve agrees, “it won’t.”

“Wouldn’t it have been great if whoever jumped him finished him off?” Bucky says, after a moment.

“We would’ve sent them flowers,” Steve agrees bleakly.

“Still should, if they get caught,” Bucky says.

“Pay their bail,” Steve adds.

They smile, exhausted, even though they’re up to their throats in terror and they don’t know what’s going to happen. Then Bucky lays against Steve again, the feeling of being held overwhelming them, wrapped up in each other, scared but safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again ik updates have been slow i really have just been unbelievably exhausted lately 
> 
> If you are not familiar w Thelma and Louise a) great film, do watch and b) there’s a rape scene early on which is what they’re talking about
> 
> I wrote another thing for this universe lol check it out if you feel like it i like it quite a bit i really like writing the little one shot things it’s linked in this series
> 
> Thank u all so so so much for continuing to comment on and support this story i truly cannot tell u how much it means to me it’s sososo good of you you’re all wonderful
> 
> Jessemovie on tumblr, until next week


	15. fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy thanksgiving if you celebrate it my friends this chapter is very self indulgent

Getting home isn’t like returning after an apocalypse the way they’d both expected. It’s almost comforting, pulling in and seeing their house there, preserved, untarnished by these last few weeks. It’s such a relief to Bucky, who’d half-expected it to feel foreign and dangerous the way the penthouse had after Alexander. Instead, it looks like home, the home they bought together, that they decorated and sculpted and filled up with safety that hasn’t been drained out of it, despite everything.

They go to Maria and Carol’s the night after they get back. This week is packed. They still have to face the fact that Rumlow and Pierce have barrelled back into their lives, and Thursday is Thanksgiving and that Sunday is Steve’s newest opening. They are so tired, but life continues forward and they stumble along with it, clinging to one another.

“So,” Carol says, after the formalities, once they have sat down in her living room to discuss. A pause, weighted enough that the air ripples with it. “Um. It’s not great, guys. Actually, it’s really fucked.” She sighs. “Basically, his precinct steamrolled us on the case. They said it doesn’t qualify as sex crimes and they’re handling it, so they’re protecting him. They’re gonna say there isn’t enough evidence or whatever, but basically, as of right now, we can’t arrest him for that.”

Bucky grits his teeth against tears. It’s not a surprise, but that somehow doesn’t blunt the pain.

“He still saying Steve attacked him?” Bucky asks, strained, terrified protection in the words. Steve runs his thumb over the back of Bucky’s hand.

Carol grimaces. “He’s sticking to it. But they don’t have enough evidence to arrest you, Steve, so you guys are okay with that.” She purses her lips worriedly.

“Anything… anything else with Pierce?” Steve asks, his voice exhausted. Bucky winces beside him.

Carol considers this question as if she’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask. “Radio silence from both of them. Rumlow might’ve thought it was too close a call last time, so he’s backing off you for now.” She looks so apologetic. “We tried to get access to his call record, and if they’d talked on the prison phones, we’d have been able to listen. Pierce probably has a phone and pays the guards to look the other way.” She bites her lip, glancing momentarily at Maria. “We got the visiting records. Rumlow, um, has been there six or seven times.”

The words, wrapped in barbed wire, grind terribly in on Bucky. He’s, abruptly, so tired, the life in him dragged, screaming, out. He leans on Steve, too defeated to hold himself up. Steve’s hand settles warmly in between his shoulders.

“I’m really sorry, you guys,” Carol says. She sounds it. “Fury and I are gonna go see him.”

Bucky shudders. “Thank you for doing all this, Carol,” he says quietly. 

She nods sadly. “Sorry I can’t do more. Everyone around them is stonewalling everything.” She rakes a hand through his hair. “We’re gonna get him. It’s just gonna take longer than it should.”

Bucky finds that excruciatingly hard to believe.

“Um.” Steve clears his throat. “Sharon Carter, Rumlow’s ex-wife, didn’t testify again for the mistrial.” Carol nods. “Do, uh—do you think it’s possible that they threatened her? 

Carol quirks an eyebrow and leans back in her seat. “What makes you think that?”

“Why wouldn’t she testify?” Bucky says quietly, biting his lip.

Sometimes when he talks he still shields himself, like none of it is worth being heard anyway, like someone is going to sneer at him or hit him or tell him to _shut the fuck up, stupid little whore—_

He swallows and leans in against Steve.

Carol watches them, her face thoughtful. “She might’ve just not wanted to go through it again,” she reasons gently.

“It cost her the case,” Steve pushes.

“I looked at the case files,” Carol tells him. “They still found him guilty. The prosecution had hospital records. It’s not that unlikely that she just didn’t want to deal a second time.”

“Do you think the judge would’ve changed his sentence like that if she’d testified?” Steve asks.

“I don’t know,” Carol says. “Honestly, probably.”

“Did you look at the first case files?” Steve asks her. She shakes her heads, leaning back. “How different was it?”

Carol purses her lips. “Look. Had she testified, it might have gone differently. It didn’t change the verdict. She did a great job on the stand last time.”

Bucky says, quietly, “You really don’t think the judge would have given him a different sentence after listening to her?”

She considers this. “I don’t know.”

Bucky glances down and wrings his hands a little. “If… if he went after her, or threatened her, or… whatever, um—there’s the evidence to arrest him.”

Carol looks between them. Maybe they convinced her enough, maybe she’s humoring them, but she sighs and leans back. “I can reach out,” she says finally. “I don’t know if she’ll wanna talk. I don’t know if it’d even be admissible, but I can try.”

“You don’t think it’s crazy?” Bucky asks her, voice quivering.

“No, it is. But everyone involved in this is probably certifiably insane,” Carol tells them, and smiles a little. “I think it makes sense, that he at least contacted her. I’m assuming she has a restraining order, but we know how highly he regards the law.”

“Thank you,” Steve says. His voice sounds so tired.

Carol gives them a small smile. “You two are gonna owe me, one day.”

She’s joking, but Bucky feels a sharp prickle of guilt at the words anyway. He’s still fighting with himself to believe he isn’t a burden on the lives of everyone he loves, a truly impossible and incredible belief that he’s making slow headway on. Right now, even though Carol isn’t serious, even though rationally, he knows everyone in this room loves him, his spine shudders with the conviction that she’s fed up and impatient with him and the landslide of damage he drags into the lives of everyone he cares about, that one day, she and Maria really will tire of him and want him away from them and their daughter and the pretty, happy life they’ve made. It makes him feel dizzy to think about, but it seems, abruptly, like an inevitability.

This anxiety must present itself, because Maria leans in a little and says, “She’s joking. You two can ask us for anything.”

Carol gives her a strange look, then coughs and says, “Yeah, of course. It’s not a problem.” She smiles, warmly.

“Thank you,” Bucky says again, quietly. This time, there’s more behind it.

Carol reaches forward and gives his hand a squeeze. 

He lets, for a moment, the vicious inadequacy go.

***

They head towards the subway, after Maria and Carol have sent them home with a Tupperware of food and made them promise to call with anything. They’re almost there when Sam calls Steve.

“Hey,” Steve answers.

“Hi,” Sam says, “right now, I’m ten minutes away from Barrows, and we haven’t done a pool night in ages. Come meet me.”

“Aw, man, I’d love to, but—”

Bucky squeezes his arm and shakes his head. _Go_ , he mouths, frowning. Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Let me call you back in two,” he tells Sam, and hangs up, then cocks his head at Bucky.

Bucky sighs and lays both arms around his shoulders. “Go,” he says gently. “Have fun.”

“We were gonna go home and do laundry,” Steve argues.

“Do you hear yourself?”

“I love you so much that even doing laundry with you is fun.”

Bucky bites back a smile, but says, “You’re allowed to have a life, you know.”

“On the contrary,” Steve says, “you are my life.”

Bucky, predictably, rolls his eyes. “I’m gonna feel bad if the reason you don’t do fun things with your friends is ‘cause you’re worried about me.”

“It’s not,” Steve says, about ninety percent truthfully, “I just like being with you more than anyone.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, “go play pool with Sam. It’s really, really okay.”

Steve considers this. He hasn’t gone out with Sam in weeks, and he does miss him, but with everything, the idea of splitting up from Bucky makes him nervous.

Like he can hear Steve’s thoughts, Bucky says, “Stevie, it’s fine. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

“I know,” Steve tells him, squeezing his hands. “You’ll call me if anything does, though, right? Or if there’s anything you need at all?”

Bucky smiles. “Yeah.” He kisses him, quick and soft. “You’re fine. I wanted to finish a scene, anyway.”

The streetlights cast buttery light over them. Steve is so in love with him that he thinks his heart must strain under this relentless, enormous love.

“Okay,” Steve says, and smiles. Bucky does, too. “Two, three hours max.”

“Have fun,” Bucky tells him, pushing himself up to kiss him on the cheek. “Don’t rush it.”

Steve pulls him back for another kiss. “I love you,” he reminds him. “I’ll see you soon. Don’t wait up if you don’t want to.”

“I love you, too,” Bucky says. “I’ll see you later. Have a good time, baby,” He smiles back behind him before disappearing into the downtown subway, and Steve smiles after him like an idiot before heading uptown.

Sam is waiting for him outside, hands thrust into his pockets, and he grins when he sees Steve.

“Didn’t think you’d come,” he greets him, clapping his shoulder when he’s close enough.

“Had to beat you,” Steve replies with a grin, pushing the door open.

“In your dreams,” Sam answers.

It’s easy and comfortable. They haven’t been here in over a year, since before Steve got Bucky back, and he feels a little like he’s playing a role. _You’re my life_ , he’d told Bucky, and that had been true. He’s twenty-three and he has already settled down with the person he will spend the next seventy years or so loving and that thrills him. There’s nothing in the world he’d rather be doing with his time than building this life with Bucky.

So he orders a seltzer and grabs a table in the corner with Sam and plays, and he does enjoy it, but he thinks he may have aged out of the years when this had been everything. The last time they did this, they’d gotten drunk and walked a few dozen blocks and laughed the way young drunk guys do. The knowledge that the night isn’t going to end like that just leaves him with relief.

_You’re so old,_ Bucky will tease him, when he explains this, and maybe that’s true. But he racked up more than enough wild nights in the last four years and they all left him feeling depleted, and right now, getting to go back to his brownstone in Park Slope and see Bucky is the greatest reward in the world.

“How come you didn’t tell me about Wanda?” Steve slags him, lining up his shot. 

Sam laughs, a hint of self consciousness behind it. “I don’t know. We didn’t know where it was going, and then it was kinda fun to have it be a secret, and then it got too late.”

Steve rolls his eyes good naturedly and sips his club soda. “Still going good?”

He smiles. “More than good.”

“That’s so great, Sam,” Steve says, delighted for them.

“Can I ask you something you might not answer?” Sam asks suddenly.

“Shoot,” Steve says, eyebrows raised.

“Have you and Bucky had sex?”

It catches him off guard. “No,” Steve tells him, after a moment. “Not since high school.” Sam nods. “Why?”

He glances down. “Wanda…” he starts, and bites his lip. “Has had, um. Some of that stuff, too.” Steve knows this, vaguely. Bucky has told him about some of it. “And I, uh—she doesn’t talk about it a lot, but it’s there, you know? And she—she and I have had sex. And it was… we were both great with it. That’s not… I didn’t fuck that up, right?” Nervous, he rubs the tip of his cue with chalk.

“Well,” Steve says carefully, “if you guys are talking about it, and you're both comfortable, and everything, I mean… That’s just how it is for some people, right? Then that’s great. No one’s gonna have exactly the same response to… that.” 

“I know,” Sam says, “I mean, I’m getting a phD in this stuff.” Steve snorts. “Theoretically, yeah, I now. It’s just so different when you’re right there, you know?”

“I know,” Steve says, and god, does he.

“I think I’m in love with her,” Sam says, simply and abruptly. “It, uh. I know it sounds insane, and it hasn’t been that long, but I’ve just… I’ve liked her since I met her, and she’s—she’s amazing.”

“Oh, yeah?” Steve grins. “That’s fantastic, man.” And it is. It’s one of the most profound pleasures in the world, watching these two people he loves so much fall in love with each other, with the person he loves the most next to him to experience it too. 

Sam gives him a side smile. “Uh huh.”

“You tell her that?”

“Not yet,” he replies. “Just… god, Steve, she’s had so many bad things happen to her. I want… I want to be a good thing in her life.”

“You are, Sam,” Steve tells him, and smiles. It’s new, seeing him this way. He’s settled, softer around the edges, eased into this relationship in a way none of his college or high school girlfriends ever seemed to bring out in him. He wonders what it’s like for Bucky, seeing Wanda with him. He makes a note to ask.

Sam returns the smile, then aims his cue again.

They finish the game (Sam wins) and walk slowly back to the subway. The streets have been stripped bare by winter, and Steve can’t wait to get home.

“It’s funny, seeing you with Bucky after all this time,” Sam says suddenly.

“What do you mean?”

Sam smiles thoughtfully. “Just… in comparison to the way you were in high school. It’s interesting.”

“Are we different?” Steve genuinely doesn’t know.

He thinks this over. “Not in most ways,” he says, after a moment. “Like, the way you guys talk to each other is the same, mostly.” He pauses. “You look at each other the same.” Steve’s heart swells. “You’re softer with him, though.”

“Well,” Steve says, raising his eyebrows. “No shit, man.”

“I didn’t know if you even realized you’re doing it,” Sam says. “A couple weeks ago, right before me and Wanda started dating, we were all out somewhere, and this group of guys came by and they were just being fucking loud—remember this?—and one of them threw a punch and Bucky looked so, so freaked.” He does remember this. They were in the park on a picnic blanket, and it had been a couple of drunk assholes, and Bucky made himself as small as possible when they started yelling. Steve hadn’t thought anyone else noticed. “And you noticed so fast, and so you started rubbing his shoulder and you whispered something and he relaxed a little.”

“I know I’m doing it,” Steve says, turning over his wallet in his hands. He swallows. “I worry about him.”

“I know,” Sam says, “but Steve, he’s doing really good, all things considered. You both are.”

“I’m scared of losing him all the time,” Steve says softly.

Sam looks at him and lays a hand softly on his shoulder. “You aren’t ever gonna lose him again, Steve.”

“He’s still so hurt, Sam,” Steve whispers.

Sam looks, sadly, over at him. “He got hurt so, so badly, Steve. It takes so long to recover from that.”

“I just—“ He looks down and closes his eyes. “I feel fucking useless, sometimes. I can’t make him get better any faster. I can’t even protect him from fucking Brock Rumlow.” He’s only said that to Henry.

“I think for you,” Sam says carefully, “you aren’t gonna feel like you’re doing enough until the day he feels absolutely safe and okay. But that’s bullshit, Steve. Do you even know how good you are?”

Steve doesn’t say anything. They’ve reached the subway, so instead, he hugs him for a beat longer than usual and says he’ll see him soon and heads downtown.

He misses Bucky. It’s an absurd thing to think, when he saw him two hours ago and will see him again in less than one, but his absence leaves Steve wanting and unbalanced, not distressingly so, but enough that when he returns to him and wrap his arms around him and kisses his hair, he will feel his heart sigh and settle in his chest.

He thinks about Sam asking him if they’ve had sex, and bites his lip. Sex has never been so complicated. _It doesn’t matter to me_ , he’s told Bucky, more times than he can count, because in most ways, it doesn’t. In the ways Bucky thinks it does, it doesn’t. He’ll love Bucky if they never have sex again. He’ll marry him regardless, he knows, without a second of hesitation or resentment over sex.

But it does matter, in small, finite ways that keep him up at night. He’d never, ever, ever touch Bucky when he didn’t want to be. But he finds himself, sometimes, wondering about slipping his hands below his jeans and kissing his neck and making him feel good the way he had known exactly how when he was eighteen, making his cheeks flush and his arms go tighter around Steve, and how fucking happy it would make him to be able to do that now, to take all the ways that sex had become a nightmare and make them so small until they could be crushed and scattered aside and replaced by the trust and love and pleasure that had once been there. Bucky deserves that. He wants to give Bucky everything, in every category. Sex for them, a million years ago, had been something sacred and precious and safe and rich with love. Bucky deserves that again, all the pleasure and joy and love that sex had once been for him. He remembers Bucky in the shower, hands in Steve’s hair, cheeks flushed such a lovely pink, small, breathy moans escaping him, so gorgeous that Steve had to remind himself for a moment that he was real, and thinks he deserves that all the time, without a moment of doubt or fear or, unimaginably, self consciousness about whether he was _good_. As if Steve could ever see him as less than unworldly exquisite.

(He thinks about the people who made him think he had to be a certain way to be _good_ and he feels ill. He thinks about the people who made him think he was _bad_ and he wants to cry.)

And beyond that, in the ways that make him deeply ashamed of himself, is the fact that simply put, he wants it too. Not so intensely that he would ever, ever, _ever_ even consider sleeping with someone else, but enough that when he gets himself off (discreetly, in the shower, because that’s not something he’s going to put on Bucky right now) he thinks about Bucky—high school Bucky, their bodies close, breath heavy and frantic, or Bucky now, his skin warm, giggling through lazy kissing on the couch—and then, inevitably, feels immensely guilty.

“I feel like I’m just fucking—like I’m objectifying him, the way they did, or something,” he told Henry, once he got past the initial talking-to-your-therapist-about-sex discomfort.

“Steve, you wanting to make your boyfriend feel good isn’t the same as the guys who raped him,” Henry told him seriously. 

“But am I just… _using_ him?” Steve asked, disgusted with himself.

“No, you aren’t.” He paused. “Those guys didn’t think of him as a person, Steve. They just brutalized him. You are such a good partner in every single way. Being attracted to your boyfriend is okay, you know.” He smiled a little.

But it still doesn’t entirely ease the guilt for wanting that. It’s not everything, but it’s something, small and unimportant as it is, and Steve wishes it could be nothing.

He lets himself in, and Bucky is laying on the couch, asleep. Steve bends down to kiss his cheek, and he stirs, then reaches groggily up to wrap his arms around Steve’s neck and shifts so Steve can sit next to him.

“You have fun?” Bucky asks sleepily.

“Mhm,” Steve says, combing his fingers through Bucky’s hair. “Finish your chapter?”

Bucky nods, then lays his head in the crook of Steve’s shoulder. “I love you,” he says, and yawns.

“I love you, too, Buck,” Steve says, and kisses his forehead. “Wanna go upstairs, baby?”

“‘M too tired to move,” Bucky complains. Steve laughs, fondness bursting through him.

“C’mere, dumbass. I got you.” He picks him up, his body warm and light (being able to carry Bucky like this, he’s decided, is the only important reason for keeping his workout regimen as it is) and Bucky settles comfortably against his chest.

“You’re the best boyfriend in the world,” he says, and kisses Steve’s cheek.

“Right back at you.” He kisses Bucky’s hair and sets him down. “I’m gonna shower, then I’ll be right here, ‘kay?” Bucky nods, pulling the covers over himself and settling in. Steve takes a moment to smile at him. He can’t believe his luck.

***

They’re in bed, two days later. It’s late, and they’re almost asleep. Steve is holding Bucky from behind, even their legs pressed against each other, his face buried in Bucky’s dark hair.

Bucky thinks, suddenly, about how terrified he had been the first night Steve asked him to sleep in bed with him. It was a few nights after their balcony kiss, and Bucky had sat down on their makeshift living room floor bed and Steve, standing, had looked at him and asked if he thought they might be more comfortable in the bedroom.

“We don’t have to,” he added quickly, when Bucky’s eyes went wide. “Of course we don’t have to, I just thought—but we can stay here, if you want, too.” Bucky had felt so absurdly ashamed of his own selfish stupidity, because before that he had managed to convince himself that they would sleep here on the floor forever, chaste and safe, and he had wanted so badly to tell Steve he wanted to stay there, but then he’d thought _you’re here, in his home, using his money every single day and you’re going to keep him from his own bed, too?_ So he had nodded and forced a smile.

It wasn’t the bed, though, but what he knew would happen as soon as they reached the bedroom. And he knew he couldn’t say no, not after everything Steve had given him, not now that they were basically a couple, not when he had already slept with Steve before. Sometimes men didn’t care when he was limp and motionless, but he thought that Steve would. Sometimes they did, and they’d press a hand over his mouth when he couldn’t keep the sobs silent and mumble, _sh, sweetheart, I’ll be gentle, none of that_ and sometimes he would check out and come back to them shaking him roughly by the shoulders or smacking him and hissing _where’d you go, what the hell am I paying you for_ and then he would try to pretend but it was never easy. He wondered if he’d be able to pretend he liked it enough to convince Steve, or if Steve would know he was lying, or if he’d even be able to lie. He tried, for a moment, to remember what sex had been like once with Steve, what he had done when he really had been enjoying it, but it was like trying to apply a scene from a movie to his life and it had left him feeling sick and cold with fear again. He climbed in after Steve, and when Steve flicked his light off and wrapped his arms around him, he closed his eyes and waited for Steve to push his hair aside and suck kisses into the back of his neck, or to grind against him and pull down the waistband of his sweats, or to flip him over and wrap a hand around his neck. But he hadn’t, he had just kissed him lightly on the cheek and whispered, “Love you, Buck,” and he had been able to listen to Steve’s breath become slow and even, and wondered, vaguely, if maybe Steve really wasn’t going to want to have sex tonight. Eventually, he must have slipped into sleep too, and when he woke the next morning, Steve was already up and making them coffee, and the next night, he hadn’t tried anything either, just held Bucky gently against his chest and played with his hair, and after maybe a week, Bucky became addicted to sleeping in Steve’s arms on his obscenely comfortable mattress, and the fear had slipped away for something that he realized later was contentment and safety.

Later, after the night in the bathtub, when Bucky broke down and told him all the terrible truths of his last four years, Steve had asked him, worried, if he was okay with sleeping together.

“‘Cause we don’t have to, Buck,” Steve promised him, looking so guilty. “I didn’t mean to—I never want to force anything on you. If you aren’t comfortable, we won’t do it.”

But by that point, Bucky couldn’t imagine not sleeping beside Steve, couldn’t bear to lose falling asleep held and warm and smelling him and feeling his heartbeat thrum under his cheek, or the relief of waking up, choked in terror, and realizing Steve is there with him, whispering to him that he’s okay and rocking him back to sleep while he cried, and when he told him that, Steve looked so relieved Bucky thought he might burst into tears.

Right now, Steve winds his arms a little tighter around Bucky, and he smiles. Then, vaguely, he thinks about another night in their old place, and he shakes off sleep.

“Can we do something for Thanksgiving this year?” Bucky asks Steve suddenly, turning over to look at him.

They are two days past the conversation at Carol’s, two days from Thanksgiving and six days from the gallery. Carol and Nick have promised to go see Pierce and Sharon, respectively, but they’re waiting on approval from their boss and they haven’t tracked Sharon down yet. They are waiting, anxious, for something to happen, but nothing has. Things are almost peaceful again.

Steve laughs. “Sure,” he says, “like what?”

Bucky nestles closer to him and sighs, content. “Can we cook stuff? Even though it’s just gonna be us, I really wanna do that.”

Steve smiles, so full of adoration that Bucky blushes. “Let’s do it.”

They do expect it to be only them; Natasha and Peggy are spending it with Nat’s family, and Wanda, for the first time, is meeting Sam’s.

“I’m nervous,” she told them.

“Sam’s family’s great,” Steve told her, which is true. “They’re gonna love you.”

“They’re really sweet,” Bucky added. 

“I spent Thanksgiving with them twice,” Steve said, “and I was terrible company. The fact that he’s bringing you this year is gonna be a huge step up.” She and Bucky both laughed. 

So it really is just them, which is what it had been the year before, when they had just found each other again and Bucky could still barely bear to be touched by Steve, and they had ordered takeout and tried to pretend this was all normal. Even cooking something this year feels important, this arbitrary but beautiful part of their life together, this thing Bucky never thought he would ever have again. Thanksgiving in his home with a person who loves him, a good meal they can cook together. To be able to plan this with Steve, to be able to walk with him down to their market and fill a basket with all the good food he wanted, when a year and a half ago he had been permanently starving, is so overwhelming to Bucky that he has, like he often does, to remind himself that this is real, that no one is going to take it from him. So he’s happy with this plan, and Steve is too. Then Maria calls them the Tuesday before and asks what their plan is.

“Um,” Steve says, “we were just gonna be here—”

“You two should come over,” Maria says. “It’s just gonna be us, my parents are going to California to see my sister this year.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and glances at Bucky, who shrugs and smiles. “Really?”

“No, I’m kidding. Of course, really.”

So they do, bringing some stuffing and a bottle of wine that they won’t drink. They get there early, while Maria is getting things prepared in the kitchen while Monica draws turkeys at the kitchen table, and she looks delighted when they show up.

“Can we help?” Steve asks, grinning at her. Monica is already snuggled up to Penny, and it makes Bucky smile.

“You guys wanna do a second pie?” Maria asks them, gesturing vaguely at some untouched baking fixins on the counter. They nod. “We’re so happy you came,” she adds, kissing them each on the cheek once before turning back to the stove.

“Where’s your wife?” Steve asks her, looking up from the paper Monica has thrust at the two of them to gush over.

“We forgot goddamn gravy,” Maria says, “she ran out to get it. She should be back any second.” Then, smirking, “You guys think it’s too early for Christmas music?”

“Of course not,” Steve says, while Bucky nods in agreement.

She grins and nods at her laptop. “I knew I liked you. Put it on, before Carol gets back. She’s gonna lose it.”

Laughing, they do. It is so easy to feel at home here, with these people he’s known for six months, but he does. He glances over at Steve, who’s doing a terrible job measuring out the flour, and kisses him, soft and quick, just because he’s there and Bucky loves him and he spent three Thanksgivings not being able to let him know that. Steve kisses him back before tossing some flour at him. Bucky scoffs.

“Kiss retracted,” he tells him.

“Doesn’t quite work like that,” Steve informs him. Bucky flips him off and goes back to the pie, and when Steve wraps an arm around him, he leans into it.

Carol gets there a little later, flustered by the cold and the Thanksgiving day lines, and the first thing she says, furious, is, “You are not playing Christmas music on Thanksgiving.”

“Three against one, Danvers,” Steve tells her, grinning.

She sighs, exasperated, and dips a finger into Maria’s pie filling. Maria swats her hand away.

“I expected more from you, Bucky,” Carol informs him. “I don’t know why, but I did.”

“Rookie mistake,” Bucky tells her with a smirk. She tosses a crouton at him.

There is a small, insistent ache in Bucky’s gut as he looks around him. He’s been thinking about his parents more lately than he has in five years. Is this, he wonders, what it would have been like had they not hated him? A messy, busy kitchen, people who wanted him there, Steve’s arm slung over his shoulder, unconcerned with their reaction. Monica, one day in the impossible future, will come home from college to the two greatest parents in the world and be enveloped in love, will one day fall in love with someone and not have to worry about being cast out as something less than human for it. It is such a strange privilege, something that should be so unconditional and inevitable, having a family who loves you.

He must look unhappy, because Steve hugs him from behind and murmurs, “Okay, baby?”

Bucky nods, leaning back into his arms. Steve kisses his cheek.

They had, as kids, usually had Thanksgiving together. Steve’s family hosted a whole group every year that, besides one year that Bucky had visited distant family in Indiana and called Steve for four hours later to gripe about it, always included the Barnes’, and they had holed up in Steve’s room to avoid his deeply conservative, insufferable relatives (and, during the later years, make out in Steve’s bed while, one floor down, people discussed why they shouldn’t be able to get married).

Remembering he and Steve are supposed to be in charge of the other pie, Bucky untangles himself from his arms and starts working on the batter.

It’s a good day. It’s probably the best Thanksgiving Bucky has ever had. Carol eventually gives in and lets Maria drag her into a dance, and when they finish the cooking portion of the day, they play Sorry with Monica sitting on Maria’s lap and ‘helping’ her, and at one point, Carol tells him he’s a wonderful cook and he has to bite his lip against tears because it still gets to him, being told he’s good for anything but sex, and Steve looks happy which makes him even happier.

When they eat, the sun beginning to dip in the sky and casting the room amber, Carol clears her throat and smirks a little, tucking her hair behind her air.

“I never thought I’d have Thanksgiving with people I interviewed at work,” Carol says, and they all laugh. “And, um, I don’t really do sappy speeches except for my wife. But, Bucky, Steve, I think you already know that you’re like family to us, and we love having you here all the time, but especially tonight. And all of us are very glad you two are in our lives.”

Bucky swallows thickly and smiles. When he glances at Steve, he’s blinking a little too rapidly. Carol, he supposes, knows exactly what it’s like to feel, however much he and Steve would deny it, the pang of rejection that intensifies a little on days like this. She gives them a little quirk of her head and smiles.

“Well,” Steve says, coughing a little, “you guys, uh. Have done more for us than like, anyone in our life, so, um, I hope you know how grateful we are for you.”

Bucky lifts his glass in agreement and says, “To us abusing Carol and Maria’s hospitality and generosity,” and they all laugh and they toast that.

They stay late, after a second round of Sorry that goes so long that Monica slumps asleep in Carol’s arms, after a round of eggnog with Maria and Carol and, embarrassingly, a final game, because Sorry is actually fucking fun and they’re all adults enough to admit that. Penny lies next to Bucky and licks at a plate of leftovers.

“That was a good day,” Bucky says, burying himself closer into Steve’s side.

“Really good,” Steve agrees happily, and smiles down at him. “I love you so much, Buck.”

Bucky stops walking, laying a gloved hand on Steve’s cheek, and pushes himself up on tiptoes to kiss him, so softly that it says everything he needs it to say.

“I’m thankful for you every second, you know,” Bucky says, smiling sleepily into the kiss. 

Steve laughs, lifting his chin enough to kiss Bucky’s nose. “Not as thankful as I am for you,” Steve answers.

Bucky giggles. “Mm, debatable.”

“Not really,” Steve replies. Bucky shuts him up with another kiss, one so warm and soft that it seems to momentarily still the wind, one that Steve returns with such gentleness that it makes Bucky wonder how he ever lived without this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> love you all thank you for reading and for continuing to send messages and leave comments about it, i really truly cannot emphasize how much they mean to me you’re all amazing
> 
> jessemovie on tumblr
> 
> see you next week for a longer and less happy chapter lmao


	16. sixteen

The gallery the next week lodges an unreasonable weight somewhere between Steve’s ribs, and it doesn’t let up. They’re waiting until it’s over to call Carol about Brock and Alexander and Sharon, tentatively relaxed; no one had been by their house while they were gone, according to the camera, and her supervisor let her and Fury track his phone (“You don’t need a warrant, even,” she explained, “pretty awful, but for our purposes, pretty great.”) and he hasn’t been to Park Slope since being discharged. Things seem to be taking a vague shape of _okay_ again.

“You okay?” Bucky asks him gently, squeezing his shoulders, as he finishes with his tie in the mirror.

Steve nods and smiles tiredly. The anxiety around these events is new; it started when the trial began and has skyrocketed from there since then. Fame is the strangest thing in the world. Steve didn’t think about it much when he was alone; he did art and got paid too much for it and somewhere along the way, a public image had risen and Tony had told him to hire an agent. Art fame was very different than involved-in-a-crime-story fame. A vague wave of guilt floods him; if he weren’t already semi-famous, at least recognizable by name to a fair sized group, this would be over and he and Bucky wouldn’t be fielding the stares and questions and interview offers in the same way. Thinking about it tonight, concentrated and intensified by wealth and proximity and media sends a tight spiral of dread down his spine.

“You look amazing,” Steve tells him, smiling. He does, black jacket over a satiny pink shirt, hair pulled up, so lovely that Steve forgets all about dreading the night. 

Bucky smiles and looks down. “You don’t look so bad, yourself,” he tells Steve, and kisses him on the cheek, tugs briefly at his tie. “I guess we should call a car.”

“I guess,” Steve agrees half-heartedly. “Let’s not stay all night.”

“It’s literally your exhibit,” Bucky replies.

“Exactly. That means I get to decide that after like an hour we can go to a shitty diner for shakes and fries.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Whatever you say, Picasso.” Then he squeezes his hand and says, “It’s gonna be okay, Stevie. It’s gonna be good. You should be so proud of this.” Steve softens a little bit.

In general, for art shows, newspapers don’t send reporters for pictures and quotes. Tonight, apparently, they do. It’s not a mob scene, but when they arrive and get inside and Steve has to endure the brief, insufferable period of photographs and questions, there are more than usual and more than just people archiving the night for the museum, and it puts him on edge. Bucky stays next to him for that, trembling a little at his side, but smiling and putting up with it. This is the worst of it, this red-carpet esque portion of the night before they get inside. Bucky didn’t have to stay, but he does. Steve loves him so much.

“Is any of this work inspired by what you went through this summer?” some bold young reporter asks, and apparently, she opens the floodgates for those questions, and before it gets out of hand Steve nods at the first girl.

“No,” he snaps, “because unlike most of you, apparently, I don’t think trauma is for consumption.” Bucky smirks a little. “Thank you!” Steve calls tightly, and waves a hand, then tightens his arm around Bucky’s waist and heads off deeper inside.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says weakly, when they slip past it. Bucky cocks his head. “I just… I’m sorry you always have to deal with that.”

“‘Cause my life was so much better before I had you and I didn’t have to ignore reporters once every three months,” Bucky deadpans back.

Steve laughs. “You know what I mean.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Bucky tells him fondly. “C’mon, let’s go see these paintings, I hear they’re phenomenal.”

Steve rolls his eyes, contentment sweeping over him as Bucky drags him along. 

He saw it last week, before it opened, but the room is nice. He’s got about twenty-five pieces in there, give or take, maybe fifteen of which were made for this specifically. There’s no theme, just the paintings, placed purposefully and indiscriminately and making Steve feel very put on the spot. 

“Not quite senior prom, hm?” Steve mumbles to Bucky. He laughs and shakes his head, squeezing his arm as they head further in.

“On your left.” Steve swings around, surprised, to Sam smirking at him, holding hands with Wanda.

“Oh my god.” Steve gives them each a hug. “What are you—”

“Bucky told us,” Wanda says. She looks pretty, hair twisted up, long red dress that she probably designed, if a little nervous to be there.

“Thank god,” Sam says, “after three years of me asking you to invite me.”

Steve rubs his neck, a little sheepish. “Sorry,” he says. Sam knows why, he’s only slagging him, but he feels a little guilty anyway. Sam rolls his eyes and claps him on the shoulder.

“These are unreal.” He gestures around the room. Wanda nods. “Nat and Pegs are out of town, they’re sad to miss it.”

“They’ll live,” Steve replies. “Thanks for coming, guys.”

Wanda kisses them each quickly on the cheek. “How are you guys doing?”

“Okay,” Steve says, because _okay_ feels like the only description that comes close. Bucky nods and gives them a little smile, and Sam squeezes his arm gently. “We’ll catch you up later.”

Sam nods seriously. “We’re gonna grab food.” He gestures to the buffet. “See you in a minute, yeah?”

“You aren’t mad I invited them, right?” Bucky says, a little anxiously, after they vanish.

“No,” Steve reassures him, squeezing his hands, “oh, my god, no. Of course not.” Bucky relaxes visibly.

“You really never let them come before?” Bucky asks him, slipping himself under Steve’s arm again.

Steve shrugs. “Yeah, I felt weird about it, I don’t know.” Also, he’d usually go home with someone he met that night and he couldn’t handle the looks they’d give him when that happened. “I’m happy they’re here now, though. And I’m happy you’re here.”

“Me too,” Bucky says, and kisses him.

Mostly, people leave them alone after that. The critics don’t say anything about Pierce. A couple of the lower-brow reporters who really want a quote slink around them and say things like, “So how are you doing, really?” but Steve gives them a glare and they fuck off.

He relaxes, after a while, the tension unwinding down his shoulders and back until he can even enjoy it. It’s nice having his friends there, it’s wonderful having Bucky there.

At some point, later in the night, the curator or manager or owner—Steve couldn’t remember, and then got to the point where it was too late to ask—thanks everyone for being there, passes around some museum donation pledge cards, and says, rather annoyingly, “Steve Rogers is gonna say a few words, now!”

Steve suppresses a groan. Bucky squeezes his hand and gives him a look, and he sighs and heads up.

Bucky’s hand lingers gently and encouragingly on his back as he leaves him. Steve trots up the stairs, shakes the guy’s hand, and takes the mic. He’s not a public speaker, he’s nowhere near a good speech-giver, but he clears his throat.

“Wow, um, this is obviously such an incredible honor—” He catches Bucky’s eye in the crowd; Bucky smiles, and he softens. “Um. Yeah, wow. This is pretty unreal, to have this, I never—high school me can’t believe this.” Polite laughter. “Yeah, I honestly don’t know what to say. Thank you, so, so much to the staff here, for making this happen, um, thank you to everyone who sponsored this, it’s so generous, um—my friends, who are here tonight, I love you guys so much, thanks for being here. Um. Thank you, Bucky, my partner, my love… everything I do, artistically, and otherwise, is better because of you. You’re my most… most cherished inspiration, and the greatest piece of art I’ll ever have.” An ‘aw’ from the crowd. Steve laughs. Bucky beams at him and mouths ‘I love you.’

Steve glances out at the crowd, scans vaguely for anyone he might have forgotten. His heart stops.

Winifred and George hover in the back, so, so uncomfortable and out of place. Steve thinks, at first, he must be losing it. They both look startled by him. He blinks a few times.

Standing a few feet in front of them, looking panicked, is Sam. He catches Steve’s gaze and his eyes go wide and worried, and he gives Steve a long, warning look. Wanda looks astonished beside him.

Steve looks, suddenly slashed open with horror, back to Bucky. He’s in the front, and he has no idea. He gives Steve a worried tilt of his head, and Steve remembers he’s still giving a speech.

“Um,” Steve says, “um. Thank you, everyone, yeah.” A smattering of applause, and he steps off the stage, the room spinning like he’s had too much to drink.

Bucky gets to him first, touching him lightly on the shoulder. “You okay?” he asks quietly, “You did great—”

Steve shakes his head. “Your parents are here.”

Bucky stares at him, blinking a few times. “What?” he says finally. Steve holds his waist and scans out into the crowd again; he’s lost them, vanished among everyone else. It unsettles him, not having an eye on them.

“They were—god, in the back somewhere—”

“Guys,” Sam says frantically, materializing. The look on his face is enough.

Bucky has gone very white. “That’s not—that’s not possible,” he whispers.

Sam rubs his neck. “It’s them, Bucky.”

He turns to Steve, his eyes huge and glittering with distress, and Steve nods miserably. “I saw them,” he says hoarsely.

Bucky swallows. His eyes have gone too bright. “I don’t wanna see them,” he whispers desperately, mostly to Steve.

“Let’s go,” Steve says, softly and shakily, to Bucky. He pulls him in closer. Sam and Wanda both give them a nod.

“We’ll head out with you,” Wanda says gently. “You guys just go ahead out, we’ll grab coats and stuff.” Her voice has a fierce, bright edge to it that Steve recognizes as protection. She doesn’t want them anywhere near him. Steve gives her their coat receipt and a small nod to thank her.

“Let’s go,” Steve repeats, so worried. Bucky is staring into the crowd, breath lodged in his throat, looking for them. He turns and swallows and nods.

“Thanks,” he says quietly, to Sam and Wanda. They nod vigorously.

They take the elevator down. Steve holds Bucky’s hand. He’s squeezing too tightly, shrouded in pain and confusion, chest heaving with labored, panicky breaths.

They make it almost to the exit.

Bucky notices them first, loitering uncomfortably by the door. He stops walking, choking out a small, punched out whimper, and then Steve realizes too and for the first time in as long as he can remember, he freezes, utterly lost on where to go from here.

They all just stare, for a few moments. Then Winifred takes a few steps in.

“Bucky.” Bucky flinches at his name in her mouth. “Honey. Your hair is so long.” She reaches to touch his face. He’s been staring at her, eyes wide and glassy, and now he flinches, jerking back.

“What are you doing here?” he finally says. He sounds so burnt out.

Her lip quivers. She looks so much older than she really is. Behind her, George has gone very still. Steve finds himself thinking that Bucky looks nothing like either of them.

“We wanted to see you,” she says softly. The air quivers, all of its molecules gathered into one stretched, taut rope. Bucky stares at her. His fingers are squeezed so tight around Steve’s hand that it hurts, but Steve doesn’t shake him off.

“And now you have,” he says finally. The pain in his voice is heavy enough to bring trees shuddering down. 

“Bucky!” She sounds desperate. Steve feels a vague wave of disgust. Bucky winces again, but he doesn’t move to leave, trapped, rooted in the ground by some invisible force. “Honey, James—” Bucky winces harder. Steve grits his teeth. “Baby, we aren’t angry, we forgive you.”

Steve wouldn’t mind screaming at her, but he’s still too appalled to form the words. He thinks, for a minute, Bucky might start crying. 

Instead, he says, “Great. Well, I don’t forgive you.” Steve doesn’t know if he’s ever sounded so exhausted.

“Bucky—”

“Why did you come here?” Bucky snaps. “To say you forgive me? What the fuck do you have to forgive me for?” He scoffs, and it traps itself in his throat and twists into a gasp. “What did you think was gonna happen right here? We’d all hug and be okay with the fact that you told me you couldn’t love me like this and sent me off to get tortured?”

Winifred looks scorched by the words. “Bucky, we were trying to help you, we didn’t want you to—to have a hard life—”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bucky replies, and laughs harshly. “Good job, there. Really fucking succeeded with that one.”

She winces again. “Bucky, we—we saw the news.” Her voice goes soft, like she’s waiting to see how he reacts. He keeps glaring, and she goes on, “The things—it broke my heart, hearing the things he did to you. I had to turn it off, I couldn’t listen—”

Bucky barks out a laugh. “That’s not what you said on tv, is it? What was it? ‘Two sides to every story?’” 

She winces. “We… that reporter, he wanted to hear certain things…”

“Bullshit,” Bucky snarls. “You just didn’t want everyone to know that you threw your kid out on the street to get raped by sixty-five-year-old billionaires.”

She looks stunned. “Bucky, the things they were saying about us—”

Bucky laughs again, the sound strangled. “Oh, wow,” he says, “the media was saying bad things about you! What was that like, mom?” He chokes a little on the word. “I don’t know, it’s almost like they were calling you an attention seeking slut and a liar and a gold digger and an opportunist! Sounds terrible.” He sneers. “What was it, like, one fucking article calling you estranged? You know what people said about us?”

“Bucky,” she says, a sob bubbling through her voice, “Bucky, we weren’t perfect—”

Bucky shakes his head at the ground. “No. No, you fucking weren’t perfect. I’d agree there.” He looks up; tears quiver in his eyes. “I was seventeen,” Bucky whispers. There is so much hurt in his voice. “I was _seventeen_ and you sent me to that place to make me hate myself and I came back and I thought that—I didn’t think anyone could ever love me, so I let guys your age fuck me ‘cause I thought that was the only thing I’d ever be worth anything for.”

“Bucky,” she whispers, but he doesn’t stop. 

Steve squeezes his hand. 

“So many men have raped me that I don’t even know most of their names,” Bucky snarls, “and so many more have just fucking used me. And it’s your fucking fault, that I hated myself so much I thought I had to do that, and I hated myself so much that when they forced me to—to do those things I thought it was my fault, I thought I fucking asked for it. You didn’t wanna hear about how Alexander Pierce raped me and beat the shit out of me and threatened to kill me every week for seven months? I didn’t wanna live it, but here we fucking are. The least—” Bucky’s voice breaks. “The least you could’ve fucking done was listen to me. And you couldn’t even do that.”

His mother is silent. She looks anguished, and she isn’t faking it. Steve can’t find a scrap of sympathy.

“And you,” Bucky snaps, turning on his dad. “You have anything to fucking say here?” George looks startled. “Wanna pull a pistol on us, maybe? Wanna hit me?” He laughs bitterly. “You don’t fucking scare me anymore, _dad._ You’re both just pathetic.”

“We’re still your _parents_ ,” Winifred whispers.

“No, you aren’t,” Bucky spits. “You were supposed to take care of me.” His voice caves in; for a second, he’s seventeen, terrified and guilty and needing his parents to love him. Then it’s gone, and he’s twenty-one again and he’s suffered so much it’s a wonder his bones don’t shatter under the pain. “Everything Pierce did to me, everything all of them did to me, that’s on you as much as them.”

He could stop. He could turn away, pull Steve with him, get them into a cab and get them home, let himself be held as he pours the grief out into Steve’s arms. But he doesn’t. _Why should he?_ Steve wonders. He’s earned this. He’s earned the right to say whatever he wants to them.

“You know what they did to me, there? They fucking drugged me and made me watch porn and hit me and held a fucking exorcism. Did you know that?” They both stare at him, lost for words. “You didn’t read about what—what Pierce did to me? You deserve to fucking know. You deserve to feel one billionth of what I felt.” He pauses; the words are thick and choked with pain. “He raped me so many times that when I’d pass out from the pain I’d wish I wouldn’t wake up. He beat me ‘till I couldn’t fucking walk, and then he’d press down on the bruises and if I moved or made a sound he’d hit me with his belt.” Winifred makes a heartbroken noise. “You know what, I’m glad you didn’t read,” Bucky snarls, “‘cause now I get to see you understand what you did to me. ‘Cause him, and fucking all of them, they’d hit me and call me a fag and tell me I was disgusting. But do you know who told me it was okay to be treated like that in the first place?”

He’s almost hysterical; his chest heaves, tears spilling down his face. Steve is heartbreakingly proud of him.

“How’s it feel that it didn’t work?” Bucky goes on, almost taunting them. “Conversion camp must’ve been fucking everything you had saved, huh? You hated me enough to spend everything you had on a place that drugged me and tried to exorcise me, and then I went home and sucked off every closeted piece of shit in New York and still ended up with Steve.” His fingers tighten in on Steve’s. “That’s gotta be way more _sin_ then if you’d just let us be, right?”

“You seem to be doing fine now, Bucky,” George says. His voice is weary; almost cold, but without enough energy to get there. Bucky jumps a little when he speaks. “That suit probably cost more than the house we raised you in.”

“Almost,” Bucky snarls back. “Could’ve been nicer, if I weren’t spending all my money on therapy ‘cause my parents fucking ruined me.”

“We _tried_ ,” Winifred sobs.

Bucky scoffs. “Yeah. Well, you fucking failed.” Bucky takes a small step in. He doesn’t let go of Steve’s hand. “You’re both disgusting. I’ve fucked half the men in New York, but you’d still be going to hell before me, if it wasn’t complete bullshit.”

Winifred hits him. 

It isn’t hard, and it happens so fast that Steve doesn’t have time to react, so his usual, instinctual, throw-himself-in-front-of-Bucky doesn’t kick in until after. Penny growls at her, jumping in, and she startles back. Bucky flinches and jumps back with a shudder.

“Don’t _fucking_ touch him!” Steve snarls, throwing his shoulders back and stepping in. They both take a few shaky steps back; Steve towers them. Bucky touches his arm and tugs him lightly back, and he relents to glowering.

Bucky stares at her. Steve can feel him shaking. 

“You and Alexander would love one another,” Bucky says finally. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes bright with hate. “You forgive me,” he repeats. “Fuck you. It’s your fault. I don’t care if the guilt kills you, because it’s fucking nothing compared to the—” He breaks off. “The fear, and the sadness, and the hurt I have to feel every day because of what you did. I will never, ever forgive you.” Then he turns and walks away from them.

“That was incredible, Buck,” Steve says softly.

Bucky doesn’t say anything, just shudders and squeezes his hand.

Steve tries not to. He makes it to the cab line with Bucky before he decides he can’t help it.

“Buck,” Steve says softly, “wait here, one sec.”

Bucky stares at him, and then, exhausted, nods. He knows Steve so well, and he doesn’t mind this time. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he tells Steve quietly.

Steve chokes out a laugh. “One minute, tops,” he tells him, voice wrecked, and squeezes his hand before heading back in.

They’re in the same place. She’s crying, and he’s patting her shoulder uncomfortably, and when they spot Steve they both straighten up.

He doesn’t say anything, at first. He didn’t realize what a shock it was to him, seeing them. Probably only a step below his dad showing up. He just stares at them.

“Steve,” Winifred says frantically, “Steve, please talk to—to him, please get him to—”

Steve shakes his head. His chest feels heavy and raw. “I’m not here for you,” he says flatly. “I’m not ever going to try to make him talk to you. Bucky is—I’m with him. I’m always with him.” He blinks. “I’m here to tell you not to do this again.” He swallows. “Don’t show up somewhere, don’t call him, don’t go on the news and talk about what awful kids we were. You’ve hurt him enough.” There’s no harshness in his voice. There doesn’t need to be. It’s the truth. “And you can’t make it better. You have—you have no idea what he went through.” His voice trembles. “The only thing you could ever possibly do for him now is leave us.”

They stare at him, cowering a little. He turns away.

“Bucky,” Steve says, after a moment, turning around, “is the best thing in my life. He’s the most incredible person in the world. I’m sorry you couldn’t see that.”

“Steve!” She’s almost hyperventilating. “Steve, we love him too—”

Steve spins on his heels, rage leaping through him, untampered any longer. “Don’t talk to me like we’re friends,” he snarls. “We aren’t fucking friends. And you don’t love him. You almost destroyed him. The only reason you didn’t is because he’s strong.” He swallows. “I’ll never forgive you either,” he says. “You took us from each other, and I’ll never forgive you for that. You had no right.” His voice trembles a little. “Just stop. Just let him be.” He turns away.

“Your dad is sick, Steve,” George calls after him.

It gets him to stop. He wishes it didn’t. He feels, abruptly, chilled all over.

He turns around again, heart slingshotting in his chest.

“Cancer,” George tells him. He sounds genuinely sad. Maybe they’re still friends. Steve had assumed the Rogers’ and Barnes’ split up after driving a hacksaw in between their kids. “That’s why he isn’t here.”

“I don’t believe you,” Steve says finally. “The last time I saw you you put a gun on me.”

“I’m not a liar—”

“No,” Steve snarls, “just a guy who would pay for your son to be tortured for four months.” They wince. Two people walk by and cast them a strange look. “I’m done talking to both of you.”

He throws the door open and strides out before they can say another word, hands thrust in his pockets. He wants Bucky, and right now, he’s a couple hundred yards away from him and there’s no one anymore to keep Steve from him.

Bucky is standing on the corner, shivering, shell-shocked and gaunt. Wanda and Sam hover on either side of him. When they spot him, Sam thrusts the coat into his hands; Steve becomes vaguely aware of how brutally cold he is. Bucky looks up and takes a step in and collapses into his arms. 

Bucky cries in a way he hasn’t cried in a long time. He cries with exhaustion, he cries with loss, he cries because he remembers being shattered so deeply, by that first man who raped him, by Pierce, by Brock, that he had wanted his mom and right now the last, childish part of him had wanted to let her apologize. Steve holds him; his arms shake a little bit. It’s almost worse than Pierce and Brock and Rollins and Stern thrusting themselves unexpectedly back into his life. It’s easy to hate someone who only ever hurt you, who didn’t nurse you through fevers as a child and promise they’d love you no matter what only to call you a traitor and a fag and an embarassment for loving your best friend.

They end up, the four of them (and Penny, laying at Bucky’s feet) in the booth of, as Steve predicted, some shitty diner on West eighty-first. 

“What’d they say?” Sam asks quietly. 

Bucky pinches the bridge of his nose. He isn’t crying anymore. He looks blank, like they reached inside of him and yanked everything out and then left him that way, quivering and miserable. Steve has an arm around him, and he tightens it.

“My favorite thing was ‘we forgive you,’” he says finally.

“Mine was ‘we were trying to help you,’” Steve adds, the bitterness too much to hold it back.

“‘We didn’t want you to have a hard life’ was a good one, too. She also said it hurt her too much to read about what—about the Pierce stuff.” He pinches absently at his wrist. Steve reaches down to stop him.

“Jesus,” Wanda says, disgusted. She reaches across the table for Bucky’s hand and squeezes. “You say anything to them?”

“It was great, what you said,” Steve tells him. Bucky looks miserable.

“Told them to go fuck themselves, pretty much. Told them I didn’t forgive them, and they should feel so fucking guilty—” His voice breaks. Steve squeezes his arm.

“Good,” Sam says harshly. 

Bucky scrubs his hands down his face. “It doesn’t matter,” he snaps. “They don’t matter. They’re dead to me.” He swallows and shakes his head. “I’m fine. It happened, and it’s over.”

Steve bites back on an observation about how unhealthy that is. Instead, Bucky lays his head on Steve’s shoulder and Steve kisses his forehead.

They stay for a little while more, discussing something mindless and inconsequential, then they go home. Bucky doesn’t talk during the cab ride. He doesn’t cry, either. Steve thinks he might be in shock. Steve might be a little in shock.

 _Your dad is sick, Steve_. He hasn’t told Bucky yet. If he speaks the words, he reasons, that makes it real, something he has to address and tackle, all this fucking history he needs to acknowledge, and he doesn’t think he’s strong enough to do it. He spent four years pretending his family was gone, raptured into thin air so he never had to think too deeply about what they did to him. The last six months of therapy have started to pull those knots loose, but this would yank it free and it would all come cascading down on him and he’s not ready for that.

“We have any alcohol?” Bucky asks flatly, the second they get inside. Steve bites his lip. “We’ve got some wine in the fridge, right?” He doesn’t wait for Steve to answer; he heads for the kitchen and digs through the fridge and grabs a bottle someone who didn’t know them gave them that’s sat untouched for the last several weeks. He uncorks it, produces two glasses, and pours them each one.

It isn’t his best judgement, but Steve can’t argue with it. He takes it and sips, and Bucky swigs half of his in one movement before pressing his face into his hands again.

“You gonna call Jennifer?” Steve asks gently.

“At some point,” Bucky says, not looking up, and downs the rest of his glass. 

Steve bites his lip as he pours another one and tosses it back. It takes nothing to get Bucky drunk, and two glasses that fast when he hasn’t eaten is more than enough. When he looks up, his cheeks are flushed, eyes dark, sending a small swoop of worry through Steve’s stomach. 

“Careful,” he says softly, when Bucky reaches for the bottle. “You should eat something, at least.”

Bucky gives him an annoyed look, but sets it down all the same and drops his head into his hands. Steve rubs his shoulders until he looks up.

“Steve,” Bucky says hoarsely. “C’mere.” He gestures towards himself for _closer,_ looking up at him, eyes huge and bright. Leaning up, he lays one hand on the back of Steve’s neck, fingers light and cool, and the other on his chest, and kisses him. Steve kisses back cautiously, cupping his face.

Bucky stands, quickly and stumbling slightly, so Steve catches him by the waist. Bucky kisses him again before he can check on him, a kiss that’s hazy at the edges so they both stumble, chins bumping. It’s raw, almost bruising.

Steve pulls away, to say something like _is this okay?_ or _should we slow down?_ but Bucky barely takes a breath. He shrugs out of his jacket frantically and kisses Steve again.

Steve should stop him, probably. He’s kissing him like _Bucky_ , though. It’s not performative and practiced, and he isn’t shaking, he’s just going faster than they probably should be under the circumstances.

“Baby,” Steve says carefully, pulling away, touching his face instead.

Bucky shakes his head. “You can fuck me,” Bucky grits out, the words heavy and ragged and a little slurred. He barely stops kissing Steve to say it.

Steve stops, though. He pulls back and takes Bucky’s hands and pulls them down from his face, squeezing, and shakes his head. “Babe, no.”

“Why?” Bucky says frantically. “I’m fine, I’m all good—”

“Buck,” Steve says gently, “not now. It’s not the right time.”

“I’m _fine_ —”

“Okay, babe, well I’m not fine with this. We’ve been drinking, and we just had something bad happen, and I don’t want it to be like that.”

“Yeah, and for once, the bad thing wasn’t about that,” Bucky replies hotly. He slurs, just a little. Steve steps further back.

“Buck, you’re drunk,” Steve tells him. 

“So what, Steve?” Bucky snaps. Steve raises his eyebrows. Bucky takes a short breath. “I don’t care, I don’t fucking care.” He blinks a few times like he’s trying to clear his head. 

Steve swallows and shoves his hands in his pockets. “We aren’t having sex when we’re drunk,” Steve tells him, even though he’s completely sober. He keeps his voice gentle.

Steve waits, for a moment, unsure of what response that’s going to get. Bucky looks at him for a long time, then deflates, his whole body drained of energy so suddenly that he slumps back into the chair.

“Okay,” he says, a belated, stilted wave of relief rolling over him. He hadn’t wanted to, he realizes, not for a second. He can’t think for more than a few moments without his brain stalling out. 

Steve relaxes visibly, straightening up a little. Bucky suddenly can’t look at him. It’s too much, everything is too fucking much, his parents and Brock and Alexander and _we forgive you_ and _You got lucky with Pierce, but you think anyone is gonna listen to some slut claiming he got raped twice?_ and the unwelcome, buried reminders of conversion therapy because _we were trying to help you_ and if he weren’t drunk, Steve not fucking him would be the right thing but right now, the one thing he’s supposed to be good for isn’t enough and that doesn’t feel exactly like the truth anymore but he can’t remember why it’s not.

When he looks up, the room isn’t folding in on itself anymore, but everything still looks wrong, twisted out of some new element that his brain can’t grasp. He wants to cry again, thinking about his parents. They looked so much older. They looked so pathetic.

Steve is a little closer than he was a moment ago. “I’m gonna take a shower,” Bucky manages, blinking lethargically.

“Okay,” Steve says immediately, nodding. “I’ll be right up, babe.”

He doesn’t know when the room started tilting on its axis. In the shower, Bucky blinks slowly under the water and tries to breathe in steam and calm down, but the night keeps playing itself over in slow motion and oversaturated color and he can’t get his head to stop pounding.

Just. His _parents_. It’s left him feeling so shaky and miserable, regressed back to seventeen. He doesn’t know if screaming at them made him feel better. Mostly, he just feels hollow and sad.

He means to wait for Steve, but he passes out the second he hits the bed.

He wakes up at some point, hideously nauseous and shaking. He blames it, conveniently, on the alcohol. He doesn’t get sick, although he spends a long time waiting for it.

Steve isn’t in bed, which sends a weak wave of panic through him. He forces himself off of his knees and out of the bathroom to go downstairs and find him.

Steve wakes up alone and not in bed and everything around him is so bleary that he thinks he might be hungover. He realizes a few moments later he’s just exhausted and startled, tremors still rolling vaguely through him. He must have crashed on the couch, although he spent a long time staring forward, thinking about his dad, somewhere, alone and dying of cancer, and how much he hated him and whether or not he could see him again. It’s still dark. He blinks through disorientation.

He rubs his eyes and mutters, “Fuck,” aloud, shifting up to sit against the couch.

“Hey.” He looks up, startled. Bucky leans into the doorway, biting his lip. He looks pale, eyes hollow and rimmed red.

“Hey,” Steve replies, smiling weakly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sleep down here.”

Bucky relaxes a little at that, settling next to him on the ground and looking him over. “Did you sleep?” Bucky asks him.

Steve shrugs. “I don’t know.” He must have, but he can’t remember slipping under.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says softly. “That was—I don’t know what the fuck—”

Steve cuts him off with a squeeze of his hand. “It was a really fucking weird night.”

“That it was,” Bucky agrees quietly. He lays his head on Steve’s shoulder. Steve fits his chin on his head. “Thank you,” he whispers, a little shakily. “For not, um. I didn’t—I didn’t really want—You know.”

“You don’t have to thank me for that,” Steve tells him quietly. Bucky nods, burying his face briefly in Steve’s neck.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. Steve shushes him and kisses his hair. “Jesus Christ, I don’t—I didn’t know—I was just so angry.” He swallows, wincing. “And I wanted to—I wanted to fucking prove that they didn’t—” He swallows again. “I’m so sick of everything being defined by the people who hurt me.” His mouth pulls into a pained, bitter grimace. “I know—I know how stupid it was, and how badly it would’ve gone if—if you hadn’t—” He draws a shaky breath. Steve squeezes his hand. “I just—I was drunk, and so fucking sad, and I wanted to be in control of something.”

Steve takes a shaky breath and watches him. “I’m sorry, Buck,” he says quietly. “That you had to—I’m sorry, baby.”

“Why aren’t you mad?” Bucky says, his voice so small.

Steve looks up. “Why would I be mad?”

Bucky starts kneading the blanket. “‘Cause my parents showed up on the biggest night of your career, and then I freaked out on you.”

Steve shakes his head, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “I’m mad at them,” he says quietly, “I’m not mad at you, baby.”

It’s started pouring outside. Bucky leans against him again, eyes closed, listening to the rain against the pavement and Steve’s breathing, and then looks up.

“Tickets cost four hundred dollars to that,” Bucky says flatly. “They don’t have eight hundred dollars lying around. They really wanted to be there.” His voice is wracked with bitterness.

“You think they wanted money?” Steve asks quietly.

Bucky laughs, a sound so warped by grief Steve is surprised it doesn’t shake the house. “Of course they wanted fucking money.”

He leans into Steve and shivers. Steve gives him a gentle squeeze. 

“How could they do that to us?” Bucky whispers finally. “All of them. Your parents, too. How the fuck could they do that?”

“I don’t know,” Steve replies softly. 

Bucky closes his eyes and hugs Steve around the middle. “What did you say to them?” he whispers finally.

“Told them to stay away. Told them I’d never forgive them, either, for splitting us up.” Bucky hugs him tighter. “When I went back—” Steve swallows, suddenly and inexplicably choked up. “When I went back they told me my dad was sick.”

Bucky looks up, eyes wide. “Oh, god,” he says, “oh, baby.” Steve nods and grimaces. “Sick how?”

“Cancer,” Steve says. The word feels dry against his throat.

Bucky exhales tightly. 

“Steve…” he says softly. Steve lays his head in his hands, and Bucky begins rubbing his back. 

“What are you gonna do?” Bucky asks, after a moment.

“I don’t know,” Steve says raggedly. Then he bends over his lap, sobbing, uncontrollable and sudden. Bucky holds him, threading his fingers through his hair and rubbing his back and rocking him. They’ve never fully mourned this together, the tragedy of what had been done to them as teenagers, the cruelty they’d faced from the people they were supposed to trust, but right now, it floods them. When he realizes Bucky is crying too, he sits up and touches his face and it floods him, overtakes him that he’s here and he’ll never lose him again because they found each other, and that’s fucking revolutionary.

They don’t have to say it, _I love you so much I need you you’re all I’ve ever wanted I’m never letting you go again you’re the only thing in the world that matters_. It’s there between them as they hold one another, the massiveness of this love, the literal fucking miracle that they’ve found each other twice. Bucky presses his face into Steve’s neck and exhales. His skin against Steve’s, the movement of his eyelashes against Steve’s neck, the curve of their bodies against each other’s; that’s the most groundbreaking thing in the world. He soaks in it. He lets it flood him and overflow him, all of him trembling with the enormousness of it.

“Should I go see him?” Steve says finally.

Bucky shifts so he can look up while still resting his head against Steve. “I don’t know,” he says. “Do you wish you’d seen your mom?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says, his voice exhausted, his soul exhausted. Glancing down, he takes Bucky’s hands and fits their fingers lazily together. “I don’t… I don’t forgive them.”

“You shouldn’t,” Bucky says softly.

Steve looks down again, his mouth quirking into something that isn’t a smile. “They gave me a half hour to pack,” he says. He’s never told Bucky this, mostly because he hasn’t let himself think about it for five years. “They set a timer in the kitchen.” He hasn’t remembered that day in so long. He still doesn’t remember it clearly; it feels, right now, like watching a poorly made home video, the lighting flimsy and weak, everything too fast or too slow or simply not there at all. He should ask Henry about that. Sam was there, he remembers, arm thrown over his shoulder as he hyperventilated on his bedroom floor, saying things like _it’s gonna be okay, Steve, you’re gonna be alright,_ poor eighteen-year-old Sam who was wholly unprepared to handle his best friend losing his entire world and then his house in the same week. He doesn’t even remember what he packed. Money, clothes, anything with Bucky. 

Bucky squeezes his hand. Steve exhales shakily, tears suddenly corkscrewing through his throat again, and he reaches up to brush them away.

“Sorry,” he mutters. Bucky gives him a long, annoyed look, and Steve rolls his eyes. “See? Now you know how it sounds when you apologize for that.”

“You don’t owe him a fucking thing, Steve,” Bucky says, voice hard.

“I know,” Steve says, swallowing. “God. Fuck. I hate him, you know? I _hate_ him. But it’s still—God.”

Bucky’s face flashes with grief. “I know,” he whispers, “I know.”

Steve swallows and wraps his arms a little tighter around Bucky. Bucky lays a hand over the side of his face, thumbing his cheek, looking right at him through diamond-bright eyes. 

“One day,” he says softly, “when we’re both more stable, and we’ve done all the things we want to do alone, we’re gonna have a family, and all they’re gonna know is love.”

Steve tilts his chin to the right and kisses Bucky’s palm. They leave it there, for now. There’s been enough pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> u already know ur comments give me a rush of dopamine cocaine could only hope to acheive !!!!!! love u all cuties
> 
> jessemovie on tumblr


	17. seventeen

_February, 2013_

_”Interview concluded,” Carol tells the camera, and flicks it off. She turns back to Steve and Bucky, who are both sitting there in slightly different degrees of devastation, and feels a pang of sympathy. Bucky is still crying a little, trying to get his breathing under control, and Steve is squeezing his hand._

_“I’ll give you guys a few minutes,” she says, softening. They both nod vaguely. She shuts the door gently behind her and strides into the observation room where Fury has been watching it since the beginning._

_She grimaces at him, and he gives a tired lift of his eyebrow. “Poor kid,” Carol says, throwing herself into a seat beside him and glancing back in on them. Bucky is leaning into Steve’s side now, sobbing into his neck, and Steve is holding him with a fierceness that strikes her as familiar. The mic is still on, and she hears Steve say, “It’s okay, Buck,” before she shuts it off._

_“‘Buck?’” Fury says, raising an eyebrow._

_She shrugs. “His middle name’s Buchanan. Nickname, maybe.” He nods, frowning. Carol waves the flashdrive. “Hacked, right?”_

_Fury snorts. “I’m sure. I won’t say anything if you don’t.”_

_“Of course I’m not gonna say anything,” she says, and runs a hand through her hair. “Jesus. Assuming the photos pan out, it’s gonna be a hard one.” She pauses. “I think Alexander Pierce’s bank is the one I use,” she says, a flash of irritation at the realization. “Look him up, will you?”_

_“Principle Trust?” Fury asks her, a moment later._

_“Yeah. Fuck. Gotta change that, I guess.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Ah, god. Lawson better give us the fucking search warrant.”_

_“She will,” Fury assures her._

_“It’d be easier if he hadn’t been a prostitute,” Carol muses. “You think they’ve got any chance in court?”_

_“They’ve got those,” Fury points out, nodding to the flashdrive. “Speaking of, want me to review them?”_

_She shakes her head. “I told him I’d do it, I should do it.” Fury nods and glances back at the screen. Steve is still holding Bucky with so much tenderness and grief, and it softens something in Carol’s chest._

_“Offer it to Maria Hill, right?” Fury says._

_“Oh, yeah, good call. I’ll give her a call after this.”_

_“I’ll get the warrants, then,” Fury tells her. She nods, clapping him on the shoulder as she stands._

_“Alright. I’m gonna kick them out.” She stretches for a moment. “Jesus, I hope Barnes has a good therapist.”_

_“Call your wife,” Fury suggests with a smile. She laughs and pockets the flash drive and heads back in._

_They bring another detective to the arrest. Val is new, a couple of years younger than them and exceptionally smart and instinctive. “This is actually my first time serving a warrant,” she tells them on the drive there._

_“Starting big,” Fury tells her with a smile. This is going to be a massive case, once it breaks._

_“You wanna be the good cop?” Carol asks him. “He probably hates women.”_

_“He probably hates black guys, too,” Fury replies._

_“Fair enough,” she says, “damn.”_

_“Should I leave?” Val deadpans, and they both laugh._

_Fury knocks. When he gets nothing, he shouts, “NYPD, open up!” and a few moments later, he does._

_She knows the look. She’s seen it a hundred times. Brief, frigid panic, masked quickly enough that they think she missed it. “Can I help you, officers?” Pierce says calmly._

_“We’d like to come inside,” Fury says, his voice even but lilted with a warning._

_“What’s this about?” Pierce asks them, not moving._

_“You’ve got a fairly good idea,” Carol replies calmly. She holds his gaze; he isn’t used to people not crumbling underneath it._

_Pierce narrows his eyes. “Got a warrant?”_

_Carol untucks it from her jacket pocket and hands it to him. Craning inside, she can make out a sliver of the living room and the kitchen. He reads it and looks up, enraged._

_“No,” he says, “I’m sorry, but no.”_

_“Unfortunately for you,” Carol says, “you decided the word ‘no’ doesn’t mean anything, so.” She smiles coldly. Val snorts._

_His face darkens._

_“Alexander,” Fury says, “we aren’t asking.”_

_He looks lit ablaze with anger, but he steps aside. “You aren’t going to find anything,” he almost spits._

_“Then you should have nothing to worry about!” Carol calls back. To Val, she says, “Alcohol cabinet, medicine chest, bedside tables. We’re looking for a rape drug, probably GHB.” Val nods and grimaces and heads towards it. Pierce goes visibly paler._

_Shoulder to shoulder with Fury, she looks around. The descriptions Bucky gave match up to a tee. “We’re gonna need to swab for DNA,” he says, and she nods. It’s a long shot, after this much time, but the couch, maybe, if he hasn’t stripped and washed it. “I’ll take that, you get the laptop?”_

_“Roger that,” Carol says, giving him a nod._

_“I’m calling my lawyer,” Pierce snarls._

_“That’s your prerogative,” Carol tells him. “In the meantime, I wanna see your laptop.” It’s lying right there on the coffee table, next to a glass of whiskey. When she reaches for it, he slams his hand down on top of it._

_“Absolutely not,” he replies, making himself taller._

_“How come?” she pushes, just to see what he says._

_“I run the biggest bank in America. I don’t need you prying through my work.”_

_“Wow, that’s impressive!” Carol says. His whole body goes taut with rage. “We’d be happy to add obstruction and resisting arrest to the charges, if you aren’t willing to comply.”_

_“This your personal laptop?” she asks, flipping it open. He doesn’t say a word. “Password, Mr. Pierce?”_

_“I’ll put it—”_

_“Password,” Carol repeats, her voice hard. “The warrant covers this, too.”_

_His hands curl into fists. Instead of hitting her, which she’s sure is what he’d like to do, he drains the rest of the glass and hisses out a series of numbers._

_“Alex?” Carol turns quickly. A blonde woman, twenty or thirty years younger than him, is wrapped in a bathrobe and staring around the room._

_“Ma’am, we have a search warrant,” Fury tells her._

_She looks astonished. “What is this about?”_

_“Martha,” Pierce says shakily, “this is nothing—”_

_Carol laughs audibly and goes back to the laptop._

__It’s, um, labeled, like, tax returns _, Bucky had mumbled to her. She types that into the search bar and opens the first few folders. The third is password protected._

_“Password to this folder?” Carol asks._

_“I don’t remember,” Pierce spits._

_“You opened it yesterday,” Carol tells him. “It’s your tax returns from this year.”_

_“I don’t remember,” he repeats through gritted teeth._

_“Fine,” she says, “our tech people will do it.” Then, just to check, she says, “What was the password you gave me earlier?”_

_“It isn’t that,” he hisses._

_“I thought you forgot it,” Carol says._

_“I know it’s not that.”_

_“The password, please, Alexander.”_

_He says it again. It works, and the photos are there. She winces a little and doesn’t look for long._

_“Got it,” she says grimly, throwing a look to Fury._

_He straightens up. “Bloodstain on the couch,” he adds, “gotta take that in.”_

_Carol turns blankly back to Pierce. His shoulders heave with the effort of the breath he takes._

_“It isn’t—”_

_“You wanna do the honors?” Fury asks her, interrupting him._

_“Love to.” Carol produces handcuffs and stares him down, grabbing, more roughly than she needs to, at his arm. “Alexander Pierce, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney” —incredible— “one will be provided for you at the expense of the state. Do you understand these rights as I’ve just read them to you?”_

_“You can’t do this,” he snarls._

_“Do you understand what I’ve just explained, Mr. Pierce?”_

_“You fucking bitch.”_

_“Yes or no, please.”_

_“I didn’t touch that fucking whore.”_

_Behind her, Martha is craning to get a look at the laptop screen. She gasps, strangled and appalled, when she sees it. Carol bites her lip and closes it all the way._

_“Mr. Pierce, if you’re having a hard time understanding—”_

_“Fuck you, I understand fine.”_

_“Great. In that case, we’ll take you down to the station now, Mr. Pierce.” He looks astonished, so taken aback by this that he’s lost for words. To Val, Carol says, “We’re gonna send a few more people, you okay for the next twenty or so?” She gives her a thumbs up._

_“Do you know who I am?” Pierce spits._

_“That’ll hold up in court,” Fury tells him, and shoves him towards the door._

***

“Ten bucks he tells us to fuck off in the first fifteen minutes,” Fury says as he throws the door open.

“Deal.”

Alexander Pierce looks, to Carol’s immense satisfaction, wrung out by prison. He’s lost weight; not a lot, but enough to notice, and the lines on his face are deeper and harder and more ragged. He’s grayer, not just his hair but his skin. His posture has been sanded down to something aged and weak. He’s wearing glasses, which makes her suppress a scoff. _How’s your money treating you now?_ she wants to say.

Instead, she says, coldly, “Alex.” It pisses him off right away.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he sneers. 

“Nice to see you, too,” Fury says calmly. No good cop, bad cop today. 

“We have to ask you some questions.” Carol half expects him to lawyer up and put them once again at a standstill. 

He nods curtly. She dives right in, not waiting for him to change his mind. “Why are you paying for Brock Rumlow’s legal counsel? And just paying him, period?”

“It’s not illegal to help a friend out,” Pierce tells her condescendingly.

“Your friend is stalking people,” Fury tells him. “People who you’d have an interest in terrorizing.”

“I don’t have an interest in terrorizing anyone,” Pierce replies coldly. 

“No?” Carol says. “You’ve forgiven Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers?”

He sneers again, revolting. “You friends with them, detective? How’s he doing?”

“Better than you,” Carol answers.

He doesn’t like that answer. “Fuck off,” Pierce tells them.

Fury, infuriatingly, nudges her with his foot. She ignores him. “Stop,” Carol snaps. “Whatever you’re doing, fucking stop. It’s not going to end well for you, Alex.”

“You don’t think life can get worse for you?” Fury interjects. “You don’t think conspiracy charges would put you in maximum security, where the guards won’t look the other way for your phone and whatever other nice things you get in here?” The guard in the corner shifts uncomfortably. Carol rolls her eyes. “When Brock’s case goes to trial, you think he isn’t going to throw you under the bus for a shorter sentence?”

“You can’t arrest a man ‘cause you don’t like him.”

“No. We can arrest him on rape and stalking charges, though.”

“You,” Pierce says, mostly to Carol, “should stop believing a hooker every time he says he was raped. How many lives are you going to let him ruin? James Barnes is a pathetic little whore—“

“And you,” Carol interrupts, “are a small, egotistical, bitter old man who’s going to die alone and in prison.” She doesn’t usually talk to anyone like this, not even perps in the interrogation room who have done the most grotesque, abysmal things, but right now, she is furious. “You blew up your little empire and now you have no one to blame but yourself, and so you’re shoveling what’s left of your life into your pathetic little obsession with him, but you know what, Alex? You’re nothing anymore. You’re another convict, and there’s gonna be no one left to remember you once you’re gone except for your lowlife little puppet who we’re going to burn alive for what you two are doing, you piece of shit—”

“Alright, Danvers,” Fury says, leaning forward to cut her off. This is a tactic they’ve used before; one of them will pretend to get out of hand, yelling at someone, and the other steps in with, _C’mon, officer, take a walk, this guy’s not worth a write up_ , but she’s not pretending right now, and it pisses her off that he doesn’t know that.

“What the fuck is your endgame, Alex?” She snaps. “You haven’t hurt him enough?” 

“He’s nothing,” Pierce snarls, and the rage is tangible, vicious and a little bit terrifying on his face. “I don’t need to do anything for him to get what’s coming to him. He’s trash. He’s damaged.”

“Well,” Carol tells him, standing, “right now, Bucky and Steve are probably going out to a nice lunch before they go back to their very nice house, and you’re going back to a cell. Nice seeing you, Alex.” 

Fury gets to his feet and turns around with her.

Pierce stands, so quickly the guard straightens up. Carol and Fury swing around.

“That slut will never beat me,” he spits, movie-villian psychotic.

“Bucky already has,” Fury replies, giving Carol a little warning touch on the arm before she swings at him. “Have a nice life, Alexander.”

“Goddamn it,” Carol snarls the second they get outside, and slaps her hand against the wall. Fury grimaces. “I thought we might get something here.”

“I know,” Fury says, “I can’t believe calling him an egotistical bitter old man who’s gonna die alone didn’t get him to spill his guts.”

“Fuck off, Nick,” she snaps, genuinely aggravated with him. 

“Carol,” he says, growing serious. She doesn't look at him. “Carol,” he repeats, touching her arm. “It was a long shot. That fucking guy wasn’t gonna help us.”

She rakes her hands through his hair. “We need to put Brock Rumlow in prison.”

“We will,” he says, “Carol. What’s this about?”

Carol glances up at him. “They’ve gotten hurt so much,” she says wearily.

“I know,” Fury says gently. “We’re gonna get him, okay? We’re gonna go talk to someone who will actually help us, now.”

Carol pinches the bridge of her nose and nods, straightening up. Then she takes a breath, digs a ten out of her pocket and slaps it into Fury’s palm, and they head off towards Sharon Carter.

***

Bucky wakes up the next morning feeling like someone has replaced all of his bones with lead. He and Steve are still curled up on the couch, and Steve hasn’t even changed out of his suit. He’s still fairly hungover, and when he thinks about his mom and dad the headache intensifies and tears press into his throat again.

Steve stirs a little beside him, awake but not yet ready to get up. Bucky isn’t either. He’d spend the rest of time curled small and safe and protected in Steve’s arms if that was an option.

“How are you feeling?” Steve asks quietly.

“Remember last Christmas when Pierce was at Tony’s party and you tried to get yourself thrown off a balcony fighting him?” Bucky says weakly. “Pretty close to that.”

Steve manages a laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes, and rubs up and down Bucky’s back. “You have therapy today?”

“In like two hours,” Bucky says, closing his eyes. “Fuck.”

“I’ll make you a smoothie,” Steve says, squeezing his shoulder.

“This part feels like senior prom,” Bucky replies wearily.

That gets a real laugh. They’re avoiding, he knows, but Bucky feels so fragile, and addressing this in any way will shatter him again and he’d rather at least wait until Jennifer’s to come undone. Steve seems to get that. 

“How are you?” Bucky asks Steve quietly, kissing his shoulder.

Steve sighs and shrugs, then smiles weakly.

Bucky sees through it. “You should call Henry,” he says quietly.

“Yeah. I will. I’m seeing him this week, anyway.” He squeezes Bucky’s hand. “You still wanna go to Carol and Maria’s tonight?”

He’d forgotten that. “We should,” he says, “right?”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. 

“Yeah,” Bucky repeats, swallowing.

Steve kisses his cheek and stands to head into the kitchen. Bucky scrubs a hand down his face again. 

He gets to Jennifer’s feeling slightly less like passing out, just exhausted, his body stale and hollow. She can tell, he knows, when she asks how he is.

Bucky grinds his palms against his eyes. “Steve had a gallery, last night,” he begins shakily.

“Right,” Jennifer says, “and how was that?”

Bucky gulps. “My parents were there.”

She sits up and blinks, astonished. “They just showed up?”

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers. Then the tears, slow and aching, grinding against his head. He shuts his eyes.

“What was it like, seeing them?” Jennifer asks. She’s being very careful.

Bucky looks down. “Awful. It took them five seconds, and I was a seventeen-year-old again.” He swallows. “They look worse. They look a lot older. He talked to me like he couldn’t even be bothered to give me the time of day. She got all tearful and sympathetic. I _freaked_ , afterwards,” Bucky tells her. “I got home and started drinking and like… freaked out on Steve.” 

She leans in. “Freaked out on him how?”

He tells her, not looking up.

“You were distressed,” she tells him when he finishes, with all her understanding of the way he drills poison into himself when he thinks he’s done something wrong. “And drunk. And you had just had to face a traumatic part of your life that you thought you wouldn’t ever have to deal with again, certainly out of nowhere like that.”

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he says quietly. There’s been a quiet, nauseating current of _bad bad bad you fucking idiot you disgusting little whore_ that shakes him. He and Steve are fine, completely back to normal, but he woke up today and thought _you’re bad and you deserve to be punished_ , and then, horribly, _what if he wants to cash in—_

For all the progress Bucky hasn’t made, he’s able, by now, to rationalize those thoughts. Steve isn’t going to hit him, isn’t going to rape him. The paranoia is just that: paranoia. That doesn’t make it less terrifying, though.

“Getting drunk wasn’t the best way to handle it. An understandable way, though.” She pauses. “It’s not about you doing something wrong, Bucky. You had a reaction to something horrible. You weren’t in the right state of mind, and you were upset. It’s worth talking about so you can know how to feel better about it, not because you should be ashamed or punished for it.”

She isn’t quite a miracle worker, but she’s close. Bucky nods and draws a breath, relaxing a little. He was being irresponsible, but that doesn’t make him worthless or bad. The paranoia dulls a little.

“Did you guys talk about it?” Jennifer asks.

“Yeah. Steve was perfect, obviously. He and I are fine, it wasn’t, like, a fight. I just felt fucking stupid and pathetic.”

“You do this a lot,” she says, gentle and thoughtful. “Beating yourself up for having reactions to really, really upsetting things happening.”

Bucky shifts uncomfortably, the way he always does when she calls him out on things. “Yeah, well.”

“If Steve’s dad showed up, and he was seriously distressed after, would you say he was being pathetic?”

“It’s not the same,” Bucky says immediately.

She raises her eyebrows.

“It’s not,” he insists, frustrated. “Steve would never get drunk and try to get me to have sex with him.”

“Bucky,” she says seriously, “you’ve gone through more in the last five years than most people go through their entire lives. You’ve earned the right to be compassionate with yourself when you have responses to bad things happening.”

He can’t open that conversation up now. He’s too shaky, whatever cables that hold him together threatening to snap, so he changes the subject. “They said, um. That they forgive me. They were trying to help. They, uh, never wanted me to get hurt. My mom” —He winces— “said, um, that it ‘broke her heart’ reading about Pierce, so she didn’t read it at all.”

Jennifer sighs. “What did you do?” 

Bucky nods. “I really yelled at them,” he says quietly.

She sits up. “What did you say?”

He swallows and reaches absently to pet Penny. “To go fuck themselves, pretty much. Told them they should feel guilty, ‘cause if it weren’t for them I’d never have been fucking—raped and shit. That I’d never forgive them.”

“That was brave of you, Bucky,” she says.

“It didn’t feel that way,” he replies, dropping his gaze.

“It was,” she says firmly. “Telling them what they did to you and how they affected your life is incredibly brave. It’s scary, to face that, and so unexpectedly, and you still said what you were thinking. That’s amazing.” Bucky swallows. “Was it cathartic? Or helpful?”

“I don’t know.” He runs a hand through his hair. “It—it was satisfying, to, um, feel like I was hurting them.” He winces. “That’s pretty awful, probably.”

“It’s not,” she replies. “What they did, they earned whatever guilt you could lay on them.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. 

“Was there any part of you that wanted to talk to them?” Jennifer asks.

“No,” Bucky snaps right away. She raises her eyebrows. “No.”

“If there was, it would be normal,” she pushes.

He looks away. “I hate them.”

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a very, very complicated set of feelings that it brought on.”

“Are you gonna tell me I should forgive them?” Bucky asks. His voice quivers.

“No. Of course not. They hurt you terribly. They were awful, abusive parents. If you don’t want to forgive them, or see them, then I absolutely don’t think you should have to. I’m only asking in case there’s a part of you that would want to try to have any kind of relationship with them.”

He thinks about this, almost relieved to hear it. Then he says, “No. I’m never gonna forgive them. I don’t want anything to do with them.”

Jennifer nods. “I’m glad you know. I’m really glad you were able to tell them what they did.” She pauses; thinking, Bucky knows, about how to phrase the next thing.

“What?” he presses.

“I don’t think you should forgive them if you don’t want to,” Jennifer tells him, “but I don’t want you to be suffocated by anger, either.”

Bucky has been bouncing his leg, but it stills now. “I’m not.”

“I don’t think you are,” Jennifer explains, “but hate and anger take so much energy.” Bucky bites back an eye roll, and she smiles, knowing. “It’s not something you need to solve here today, or even at all, necessarily. But I want to make sure whatever anger you have—rightfully—towards them doesn’t become detrimental to you.”

“You told me you don’t think I have to forgive Pierce or Rumlow or any of them,” Bucky says, sharper than he means to. “Why my parents?”

“I’m not telling you to forgive them,” she answers, “not at all. I’d never tell you that. I just want you to be conscious of the way your feelings towards them affects you, now and going forward. Familial trauma is very, very complicated, because it was caused by people you once loved and trusted. Allow yourself to feel whatever you need to around it, because I think there will be a lot of emotions around them for you, and burying it in anger isn’t healthy. Not at all to say that you shouldn’t be angry. I just want you to be able to talk about it in a way that helps you.”

Bucky looks at his hands. He doesn’t have it in him to talk about the agony of it, not right now, not when he is so tired and so angry he can feel it, elastic pulled tight in his chest. “Steve’s dad is sick,” he says, pivoting, and looks up again. “Cancer.”

“They told you that?”

“They told him. He, uh, went back after, to say something. Tell them to stay away, basically. And they said that.”

Jennifer grimaces sympathetically. “Is he doing okay?”

“He’s acting like he is. He’s conflicted on it. I don’t think he knows what to do.”

“Well,” she says, “that’s normal. Are you worried about him?”

“I just want him to be happy,” Bucky says, looking up. It’s the only thing he’s said that he’s absolutely sure of.

“I know,” Jennifer says, with a small smile. “Is he talking about this with his therapist?”

Bucky nods. “He’s gonna.”

“That’s good,” Jennifer says. “What do you want him to do?”

“I think—” Bucky starts, and takes a breath, “I think he should probably see him. I think it’s what he wants to do. He’s angry too. I just… Steve deserves peace from this.”

“So do you,” Jennifer tells him. Bucky looks away, non-committal, then swallows and nods. “Bucky,” she goes on, “I want to tell you how healthily I think you handle everything already. The way you’re able to talk about these things, and how much you’ve grown, and how healthy you are in your relationship with Steve, and your friendships—it’s extraordinary, given what you’ve been through, and even just given what most twenty-one year olds are like. You should be proud of yourself. I know seeing them brought on a lot of stress and self-doubt, but you’re handling everything very well.”

He swallows hard and nods. Then he leaves, back to Steve, to his home, trying to internalize what she told him.

***

They sit in Carol and Maria’s living room, comfortable despite everything about the situation they’re all in and why they’re there. Steve has an arm around Bucky’s shoulder and they’re both leaning against some oversized pillows, and Carol sits opposite them, cross legged and serious, beside Maria. Goose paws at Penny; she stares, utterly uninterested. 

“How’d your opening go?” Carol asks Steve.

He huffs out a dry, forced laugh. Bucky grimaces and rubs his eyes.

“Very bad,” Steve says, after a moment. “Bucky’s parents came.”

“Your parents?” Maria repeats blankly. Bucky grinds his palms into his eyes and nods. “At the gallery? Doing what?”

“Being fucking freaks,” Bucky says, not looking up. “I don’t know. Looking for money. Trying to throw us off.” Steve squeezes his shoulders.

“Want me to arrest them?” Carol offers.

“Very much,” Bucky replies. He tells them what happened, voice shaking through it, and when he’s done, Carol lets out a tight breath.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, grimacing.

“God,” Maria adds, appalled. 

“Good for you, though, Buck,” Carol says. “Jesus. The fucking nerve of them.”

“Your parents didn’t try conversion therapy?” Bucky says quietly, glancing up. They’ve talked plenty about growing up with Catholic families who’d sooner sever you from their lives than love you for being gay, but she’s never mentioned that.

“No, they tried,” Carol says, “but I was eighteen, so there was fuck-all they could do to make me.” She looks momentarily wracked with pain. Maria squeezes her arm.

“Me, too,” Steve murmurs vaguely. Bucky lays his head on his shoulder. They’re all quiet for a moment, wondering, sickened, why the universe has fixated on Bucky and Steve for such constant punishment.

Carol swallows. “I’m really sorry to drop this on you now, but we do have new information about Rumlow.”

Bucky shuts his eyes and nods, bracing himself.

Carol gives them a long, pained look. “We went to see Pierce, and he was about as helpful as expected.” Bucky rests his head on Steve’s shoulder and shudders. “He looks terrible, for what it’s worth.” A weak thrum of satisfaction, not enough to calm him down. “He isn’t gonna tell us anything helpful, but that’s fine. We also talked to Sharon Carter.”

Bucky swallows. His mouth is very dry. “What—what’d she say?”

“She’s willing to talk,” Carol says carefully, “if you’re there.”

Bucky blinks. “What?”

“She doesn’t trust us. Which is fair. But I think she thinks if you’re there, there’s no way that he’s orchestrating something here,” Carol explains.

“Oh,” Bucky says quietly. Steve rubs his back. “Um. Well, yeah. Sure. I’ll—I’ll meet her.”

Carol takes a breath. “Okay. I think it’s safe to say she’s got something on him, and if she wants to press charges, she’s gonna have to talk to us at some point. Or another cop, but all things considered here, me and Fury are, ironically, the safest bet. Can you let her know that?”

His heart corkscrewing in his throat, Bucky says, “Yeah.”

Carol pauses. “She told me I can give you her number, if you want to call her and set up a time.”

“Okay,” Bucky whispers. This is surreal.

Carol hands him a slip of paper. He pockets it. “Call her tomorrow, okay? Pick a time and place and tell me when, assuming she agrees to talk to us, and me and Fury will meet you, okay?”

Bucky swallows. “Okay.”

***

“Steve?”

Steve blinks himself awake much later that night, wincing through the grogginess. Bucky is sitting up, knees pulled to his chest, his voice very small. Penny nuzzles him.

“Hey. You okay?” Steve asks, worried, sitting up.

Bucky swallows and blinks. His eyes are glassy. “Nightmare,” he whispers. He lifts his hands a little, and they tremble. “Bad one.”

Steve’s heart sears briefly.

“It’s alright, baby,” Steve says softly, inching in. It sends a jolt of relief through him that Bucky woke him up like this. However much he worries about Bucky, the progress is there, and Steve is so proud of him. “Okay if I put my arms around you?”

Bucky nods, letting his head drop into the crook of Steve’s neck as he pulls him in. He’s shaking still, violent quivers that he tries to hide. Steve kisses his hair and strokes his back and whispers, “It’s okay, you’re okay, you’re safe, baby, we’re okay,” until his muscles uncoil a little.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” Bucky says meekly. Steve grimaces, though he’s surprised he made it this long before apologizing.

“Don’t be sorry, my love,” Steve says, his voice so gentle, tangling his fingers lightly in Bucky’s hair. “I always want you to wake me up for this, okay?”

He shakes his head, closing his eyes against tears. “I feel disgusting,” he whispers. His body trembles like something hollow and gaunt.

“Want a bath, baby?” Steve asks gently. They’ve been through this enough times.

Bucky nods, tears burning his eyes again. 

Steve starts the water and pours in bubble bath and lights a couple of the candles on the windowsill, then slips downstairs and makes tea. He’s been doing this for the better part of a year, when terror and misery reduce Bucky to flinches and tears and whimpered apologies. He doesn’t mind. It breaks his heart, but he doesn’t mind because Bucky tries so hard every day, and when he needs to feel safe and clean and held, Steve will give him that, will flood him with it, will pour it from his soul in the form of gentle words and careful arms and warm, lavender scented water that soothes the disgust sizzling under Bucky’s skin. He deserves that so entirely and fiercely.

They settle in. Bucky feels so small against Steve, arms wound around his neck, little more than a warm, trembling weight against his chest, and Steve rubs a washcloth gently over his arm and shoulders and, when he nods and gives him a small, sad smile, his neck and chin and under his eyes. 

“You’re beautiful,” Steve tells him. Bucky scoffs, exhausted. “You are. Most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”

“Not right now,” Bucky replies quietly.

“Sure are,” Steve replies. And Bucky is, even pale and trembling and teary, the most beautiful thing in the world. Bucky shakes his head instinctually. “Watch it. That’s my main art subject you’re talking about there.”

Bucky smiles, very weakly, too tired to pretend to be okay.

“You’re beautiful,” Steve repeats, “and you’re strong. And you’re brilliant. And I love you so much.” 

Bucky makes a small, hurt sound. Steve kisses his hair and traces his fingers over Bucky’s, touching the chipped paint on his nails.

“Wanna talk about it?” Steve asks softly.

Bucky glances down, constricting and uncurling his fingers around Steve’s. There’s a hitch in his breath and his body, everything stilted and quiet and subdued, and it makes Steve’s chest ache.

“I was dreaming about them.” he says, his mouth twisting bitterly down. “It was just… It was really bad.” His breath catches again, briefly wracked in terror. He looks frayed on the edges. “And, um. When I woke up, I just—I just heard them laughing.” He closes his eyes. Steve can feel him crying.

A moment of nausea, just enough to remind him that he’ll never be finished with needing to understand what Bucky went through, that he will never entirely get it. Steve bites his lip. 

“It’s okay,” he says softly, wishing so badly he could say more. “Sh, baby, you’re okay, you’re okay, you’re safe, my love. Everything’s alright, I got you.”

Bucky used to have to do this alone. In the middle of the night, waking up at Wanda’s or in an alley or next to someone who was paying him, choking down impossible terror, he’d wrap his arm around his knees and curl himself as small as possible and rock back and forth, sobbing as quietly as he could until the unimaginable panic dulled into the usual frightened, stale misery that he was used to. People would get annoyed with him when he woke them up. Once, in the middle of the night, trembling through a panic attack in some stranger’s bed, the guy woke up, rolled on a latex and said _well if you’re gonna keep me up anyway_ , and fucked him without another word. Bucky’s head whites out briefly, thinking about that. It hadn’t even occurred to him that that was rape, although of course it was. He closes his eyes and presses closer against Steve. 

“You’re so good to me,” Bucky croaks out, lifting his head. “No one—no one deserves this, Stevie.” He gestures vaguely at the candles and bath and tea, and this endless comfort and safety Steve spun up for him just because he felt bad.

“You do,” Steve replies simply. 

Bucky swallows. “They used to—to get angry when I, um, cried. They used to—to tell me to stop being a pussy. B-Brock, um. Choked me for it, ‘cause—‘cause he said I didn't—didn’t get to cry because I asked for it. And—and—and I _believed_ him.” It’s one of those times when the words burn his throat but if he doesn’t say him, they will set him on fire from the inside. That was the nightmare: someone, he couldn’t tell who, on top of him, a hand around his throat, laughing at him whimpering _stop, stop, stop_.

He winces, half-anticipating pain. He has told Steve so much of what happened to him, so much more than he ever thought he would speak aloud to another person, but it still feels impossible to say these details ( _specifics_ , Bucky thinks vaguely) and believe he deserves gentleness when he says them. Jennifer has told him over and over that the shame of them is a typical PTSD response, that no one could hear them and blame him or think he’s worthless for it, but he can’t believe that all the time.

Steve says, so quietly, “Oh, Buck. I’m so sorry, baby. Those—those fucking people were monsters, baby. They should—they should never have fucking treated you like that.” His voice shakes a little.

Steve cradles him, moving one hand through his hair and the other over his back the way Bucky has told him helps, the way that makes him feel safe and wanted and worth something. It softens the misery a little. He’s safe. He can speak all of the unspeakable things that happened to him to Steve and not get cast out in disgust. 

“You’re so good, Buck,” Steve tells him, like all the fear and shame and insecurity is written on his face. “So, so, so good.”

Bucky looks up, dizzy with fatigue. “This is how they do it, right?” He says, very quietly. “Stalking.” Steve takes a breath and lets him go on. “Wearing you down ‘till you just can’t fight anymore? I mean… I can’t sleep, I can’t go anywhere without thinking he’s—he’s gonna—” Bucky breaks off into a sob, covering his face. 

“I know,” Steve says softly. “I know, baby. It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay. Whatever… whatever we need to do to be safe from them, we can do it, okay?”

Bucky buries his face into Steve’s shoulder and nods, tears leaking over his eyelashes. The water is starting to get cold, so Steve nudges the hot faucet on with his foot so he doesn’t have to let go of Bucky.

“Steve?” Bucky whispers.

“Yeah, love?”

“I love you.” He swallows. “When I—when I tell you these things and you… you don’t leave or get disgusted, and, um, you make me feel—you just make me feel so safe and loved and—and taken care of, um. You don’t even know how much that means to me.”

Steve is quiet for a few heavy moments. “I will never, ever, ever leave, Buck,” he says, his voice thick. “I promise. Nothing you ever tell me will make me.”

Bucky nods and holds onto him a little tighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry sorry finals killed me here it is 
> 
> Also I wrote a [Christmas fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21809719) in this universe :’) read it if u like
> 
> Also happy holidays everyone love u all am
> 
> I’m back to being cafelesbian on tumblr so say hi! Idk if I’ve said this but I have been getting more messages and qs abt the story lately and I love taking about it so so much so please do not be shy to message me I think you’re all wonderful
> 
> Thank youuuuu for your comments they mean so much to me I can never stress it enough ahhhh until next week friends!!


	18. eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual warnings also a mention of corrective rape be mindful my loves

The night before they go to meet Sharon Carter, as they’re lying down, Bucky presses his body close against Steve’s and exhales. “I’m scared—” he begins, and swallows, “I’m scared she’s gonna hate me.” Actually, he is terrified, irrationally and completely. “I, um. I slept with her husband. In her house, in—in her bed, I—what if she—”

He breaks off. Steve pulls him closer.

“Buck,” he says, frowning, his voice so soft, “she knows what he did. She isn’t—she won’t blame you, baby. No one could ever blame you for that.”

“But I slept with him,” Bucky whispers, shame flushing him. Steve swallows. “Or I—I didn’t—I know, um, he raped me. B-but I went home with him, I let him—”

Against Steve’s chest, Bucky’s hand is shaking. Steve takes it and squeezes.

“You didn’t let him, baby. It wasn’t your fault. She knows that, love. She knows what he is.” Bucky swallows and nods and buries his face in Steve’s tee shirt, and it’s enough to lull him to sleep.

They agreed, after a few exchanged texts, to meet at a restaurant in Chelsea, a generic, big enough diner that no one will be listening to anything they say. Bucky and Steve are getting there at noon to meet her, and Carol and Fury are coming thirty minutes later. Still, as they walk into the diner and spot her, Bucky’s heart jumps in his throat. When she sees them, she straightens up and lifts her chin.

“Bucky,” Sharon says when he gets close enough, and raises her eyebrows. She’s rocking a stroller next to her. She doesn’t look angry with him.

“Hi,” Bucky says thickly. She sticks out a hand, and he takes it, reminded, harshly, of meeting Ava a lifetime ago at the trial. They smile, tight and forced, before dropping hands.

Sharon glances at Steve, a little wary. Bucky thinks, for a moment, she might ask him what he’s doing here. Then she gives him half a smile and says, “You punched him?”

Steve chokes out a startled laugh. “Yep.”

“Nicely done,” Sharon says.

Steve smiles. So does Bucky. She glances at Penny, then at Bucky, and he thinks her face softens a fraction.

“Sit,” she tells them, and they do. 

They don’t play introductions. Everyone here is here for one reason, and pretending otherwise would be pathetic. She grimaces at him, and he grimaces back.

She’s not what Bucky expected. She’s harder, rougher around the edges, but not cold. She’s very pretty, blonde hair cut into a blunt bob and dark, serious eyes. She studies them a moment, then sweeps her hair out of her face and gives them a calculating look. “Danvers and Fury,” she says. “You trust them?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says immediately.

Sharon raises an eyebrow. “How come?”

“We know Carol really well,” Bucky says, “she’s a really good person. She’s not, like, loyal to the NYPD. Even before we knew her, um. She was the one who, um, I talked to about Alexander Pierce.” Sharon softens her gaze a fraction. “She helped us way more than she had to. I don’t know Fury as well, but he’s helped us, too.”

She nods. “I know what Brock—um. I read about his testimony.” Bucky winces a little. Sharon looks apologetic. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Bucky tells her. He glances at his hands, flushed with shame. Steve squeezes his shoulder. “I’m sorry, too.” His voice is smaller than he wants it to be.

She looks down, spins her mug of light coffee. “If—” She grimaces again, and takes a breath. “If what he did to you was anything like what he did to me,” she says, “then he did a number on you.”

Something hot and uncomfortable pricks every inch of Bucky’s skin. “He did,” he says hoarsely.

She nods. “He—” she swallows. “The NYPD will protect him,” she says finally. “I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to end up with a target on your backs. If I—If I report what he’s done, and he comes back, and he knows I tried—” She shakes her head. When she looks up, she looks shaken. “I need to know that those two aren’t going to help him get away with this. Not even by accident, or subconsciously, or because they think, somehow, that if they let him off with a warning he’ll do the right thing. He isn’t capable of change.”

“I know,” Bucky says. “I trust Carol so, so much.” He shifts, instinctively, closer to Steve. “I’m scared of him,” he says, after a moment, and takes a sharp breath. “I’m so scared of him, and I wouldn’t tell the cops about what he’s doing to us. But Carol is good. Those two will help us. I’m—if I didn’t think that, I don’t know what I’d do.”

She watches him stoically, and then nods. “Okay.” She bites her lip, and nods again. “Okay,” she repeats. 

A beat of uncomfortable, hesitant silence.

“What’s his name?” Steve asks politely, nodding to the baby. Steve, Bucky knows, can’t deal with tentative quiet like that.

She looks down and smiles. “James.”

Bucky startles a little. Steve does too. She glances up. “What?”

“Did Brock name him?” Bucky asks, suddenly light-headed.

Shaon gives him a long, strange look. “No.”

Bucky swallows. “Sorry. Um. That was—that was what I told him my name was.”

She stares at them. “Brock didn’t name him,” she says, “Brock doesn’t even know his name. I didn’t—I didn’t know.” She winces a little. Bucky gives her a small smile, a tiny _don’t worry_ , and she returns it.

“He’s cute,” Bucky says, and he is. 

“Thanks,” Sharon says, and pulls his blanket up to his chin. She looks like she might add something, but then she looks up and her face hardens, and Bucky and Steve follow her gaze to see that Carol and Fury have arrived.

“Hi,” Carol says, with a tired smile. She gives Bucky and Steve a squeeze on the shoulder and shakes Sharon’s hand and pulls two chairs up to the booth. Nick gives them all a nod. “How are you, Ms. Carter?” she asks, and behind it, is, _are you going to talk to us._

Sharon sees through it, and swallows hard. “I need to know you aren’t gonna protect him,” she says, getting right to it. “I know—you both seem like good people, and I know Bucky and Steve trust you, but you—the cult mentality at the NYPD is unbelievable. You have to help me.”

Carol nods. “I know. It’s disgusting. We aren’t a part of that, Sharon.” Sharon raises her eyebrows. “We have nothing to do with his precinct. We’re our own category.”

Sharon gives her an exhausted smile. “Detective,” she says wearily, “c’mon. You and I both know that it’s all the same tree.”

“I don’t do this for the NYPD,” Carol says easily. “I’m not here to work for a cult.”

“Why are you, then?” Sharon asks. It’s not hostile. She’s terrified, and she needs a reason to believe in them.

Carol pauses. “I was raped, too,” she says, calm as anything.

Bucky and Steve look up, bewildered. Sharon sits back and watches her. Only Nick is unphased.

Carol holds her gaze, collected. “I know what it’s like to report something and be told to go fuck yourself. I will never, ever do that to someone. I don’t care if we work under the same umbrella. Especially not then. I’m not gonna protect him or any of them.”

Sharon thinks about this. Bucky is still reeling, but she hasn’t looked back at them yet. Steve squeezes his shoulder.

Carol adds, “Bucky and Steve are like family to me.” (Bucky feels a rush of pleasure). “This is personal to me as well. I’d never do a thing to help the guy who’s targeting them.”

Fury adds, “Your ex is a bad guy, Sharon. Besides the fact that we wanna slap handcuffs on him, we don’t want him associated with us.”

“We also have reason to believe he’s still involved with Alexander Pierce,” Carol says. “He’s a piece of shit, too, and we’d be thrilled to tack another charge on for him. But it’s also not great for us, if the guy we put away is still managing to commit crimes from jail. We want to bring them all down.”

Bucky is always impressed with how effortlessly they inhabit these roles when the circumstances call for it. It’s almost unsettling, the ease in which they convince people to give them what they want.

Sharon keeps watching them. “Why do you think he’s working with Pierce?”

“We can’t say all of it,” Fury tells her, “but they’ve been communicating. And Brock was represented by his lawyer.”

“I know that part,” Sharon says, and sighs. 

“Pierce hates us,” Steve adds.

Sharon gives them a sad little quirk of her mouth. “Yeah. I read the news.” She swallows. “Has Brock been going after you, since he got out?” she asks Bucky, after a moment.

“Yeah,” he says, mouth dry. “It’s—it’s been really bad.”

Sharon glances around the table, pursing her lips. “Okay,” she finally says, “okay. But you have to help me.”

Carol and Fury nod vigorously, almost in sync. Bucky squeezes Steve’s hand.

“Can I record?” Carol asks her. She nods. Carol opens her phone and starts to tape.

“I found out they were labeling it a mistrial in September,” Sharon starts quietly. “I got a call from the prosecutor. He was really apologetic. He told me that Brock was being represented by a new guy, the big deal defense attorney who represented Alexander Pierce. He was stressed about it. They got the verdict thrown out on a technicality with the jury, which basically meant they were starting fresh. I was… I was so angry. But I was gonna testify again anyway. Um, I needed him in jail.”

“In September, I had just gotten home from work.” She closes her eyes. “I was making dinner, and I heard the doorbell ring, and then keep going, like someone was holding down on it. I didn’t, um. It freaked me out. I grabbed a knife before I got it.”

“It was two guys. One of them was a friend of Brock’s, I think, he looked familiar. The other one, I don’t know. They, um, pushed their way in. James was asleep in his room. One of them, the one—the one I recognized—” Her hands move in little, distressed circles. “He went in and picked him up. The other one was holding me back.” She swipes at tears and then looks back at her baby, like she needs to be sure he’s still there and safe. “The guy was—holding him, and he was crying, and I was, um, I was screaming at them to put him down but—but the guy by me was bigger than me and—” she breaks off with a gasp, and closes her eyes, composing herself.

“Anyway. The one holding him said something like, ‘shut the fuck up, I’m not gonna do anything to Brock’s kid if I don’t have to.’ And I stopped, and he fucking smiled, and then said, ‘Brock is going to have another trial, and you aren’t gonna testify again.’ And then, um. Then he said, ‘It’d be a shame for another sweet little baby to disappear.’ And then he said something like, ‘You know what, you’re also gonna write the judge a letter saying you forgive Brock.’ Then he handed James to me, and they left.”

There’s a spot of lipstick on her mug. She rubs furiously at it. “So I listened. I told the prosecutor I wasn’t gonna testify, and I wrote wrote a letter saying I forgave him for the defense.” Her mouth pulls into a bitter, pained, line. “And he got out.”

“The articles don’t mention a statement you wrote,” Fury says.

She looks up wearily. “Some of the records were sealed. And it wasn’t a big enough case for people to dig. The only reason it got reported on at all was ‘cause of his involvement with Pierce.”

Carol nods. “Have you heard from him since then?”

She shakes her head, looking down again. “I moved after that, before he got out. I’m staying with a friend right now, so—so my name isn’t even on a lease anywhere. I have a restraining order on him, but—” Then she swallows. “He called me,” she whispers. “When he first got out. I changed my number, after.”

“What did he say?” Carol asks.

She shuts her eyes. “What you’d expect. ‘I’m gonna find you and kill you, you fucking cunt, how can you keep my kid from me, I’m gonna kill it and make you watch, you still belong to me.’ That stuff.”

“And you didn’t report this?” Carol confirms.

Sharon looks cold for the first time. “Because it helped so much, reporting it the first place.”

Carol nods and grimaces. “I’m not accusing you, I promise. I just wanna know what happened.”

She leans back, scrubbing a hand down her face, and just looks tired again. “No, I didn’t report.”

“Have you heard from him since then?” Fury asks her. She shakes her head.

“Not for his lack of trying, I’m sure.”

They ask her a few more questions and keep it easy. “Thank you, Sharon,” Carol tells her when she’s done, “this is more than enough for us to arrest him on.”

Relief washes over Sharon’s face, the same relief that floods Bucky. He leans against Steve, who rubs his hand in circles over between his shoulders.

“We’re gonna get the warrant,” Fury adds. “Thank you very much.”

She nods. “Thanks,” she says softly. They both smile and stand, and then Fury stops.

“Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Brock?” Fury asks her, like an afterthought.

She snorts. “Yeah. I’m at the top of the list. He’s quite a hateable person.”

Fury gives her a small smile. “He was jumped and checked into a hospital, recently. Do you know of anyone who might be responsible?”

She glances at Steve, then away. “I don’t know,” she says. “I’m sorry. It could’ve been anyone.”

“We have footage,” Carol says suddenly, like she’s remembering. 

“You do?” Steve blanches.

“Just got access,” Fury tells him.

“I’ll watch it,” Sharon says, shrugging. “Let’s see. Maybe then I can send them a fruit basket.” Bucky snorts, and they share a brief smile.

Carol opens her laptop and draws a video up, then tilts the screen towards Sharon. “It starts in the middle of the attack,” she says, “they were outside of the camera for everything before.” 

Sharon nods. She watches, for a moment, and then her eyes go wide.

“Oh, my god,” Sharon says, pitching forward to look harder. Carol straightens up. “That’s him, that’s the guy who threatened me, the one who did all the talking.”

“Are you sure?” Carol says, alarmed, turning to look.

She nods, rubbing her eyes. “Yeah. I met him back when we were married. It’s him.”

Carol nods. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. Do you have any idea who he is?”

She rotates her mug against the table. “Towards… towards the end of our marriage, Brock started… going to these meetings.” She swallows. “Fucking white supremacist stuff, he… I didn’t, um—I didn’t know that’s who he was, when I married him, and by the time I—he was already, um, hitting me all the time—“

Carol says, gently, “You aren’t on trial for who he was.” Then, sharp and alert, “Is that where he met this person?”

She swallows. “I think so. I don’t think he was a cop.”

Carol nods and looks back at Fury, lips pursed.

“That son of a bitch,” Fury says. “He knew—“

“And they wanted to frame—”

“Yeah.”

“And you think Pierce?”

“Yeah.”

Besides the absurdity of the effortlessness in which they have that conversation, Bucky has started trembling. They went after Steve, they tried to _frame_ him, tried to get him arrested. He feels sick. He lifts his head, and Steve’s face has hardened.

Bucky squeezes his arm, and he softens a little.

“That moron,” Carol says harshly. “Jesus, he’s about to have so many fucking charges dumped on him.”

Fury glances back at the screen. “You’d think they would have worn a damn mask, at the very least. Rumlow used to be a cop. He should know this shit.”

Bucky cranes his head a little bit to see the screen, if only to see Brock get punched again. A chill thrums through him, terrible and clear. Bucky swallows very hard. 

“I know him,” he says. Everyone, including Steve, looks sharply towards him. “That’s Jack Rollins,” he says, voice quivering. 

Steve snaps his head up. “Oh, my god,” he says, craning to look again. 

“Who is he?” Fury says urgently. 

Bucky curls involuntarily towards Steve. His blood surges too fast through his veins, vague, bloodied understanding starting to take shape.

“He assaulted me,” Bucky whispers, wincing. Next to him, Steve’s breath has become sharp and labored. “He was… he was a friend of Brock’s.” 

“You’re sure, Bucky?” Carol asks. Her eyes are bright and focused. He bites his lip.

“Yeah,” he says softly.

“I’ve—I’ve met him,” Steve adds shakily. “It looks like him.”

“Jesus,” Carol says, staring at the screen. Then she says, “Any idea where we can find him?”

Bucky stares at his nails. “He used to have a condo in a building on thirty-eighth and eighth,” he says quietly, and closes his eyes at the memories that pulls up. Crying, begging, the room framed in a nauseating, alcohol fueled crystallization, a swastika inked onto his arm, in and out of focus as he pounded into Bucky. Steve pulls him closer and resumes rubbing his back. “I don’t know if—if he still—” He swallows before his voice breaks. “But, um, yeah, he was like, a fucking neo nazi, or something.”

Sharon takes a hard breath.

Carol grimaces and gives his shoulder a light little squeeze. “Okay,” she says, mostly to Nick. “We’ll get on him, too.” How ironic, if this lets him bring down Jack Rollins too, if the three men who hurt him the most all get caught together, if their violent delights really do have violent ends. He bites his lip against the hope.

“Thank you guys,” Fury says to them, nodding warmly. “This has been extremely helpful.” Then he shares a look with Carol and they stride off together, muttering importantly.

Sharon opens her mouth like she wants to say something, then swallows and looks between them. It’s the most vulnerable she’s looked the whole time. “I met him when I was nineteen,” she says finally.

_So did I,_ Bucky thinks, and feels suddenly and unbearably sad.

“I didn’t—I didn’t have a framework for what a healthy relationship was, he just—I was getting attention from this guy in authority, and he made me feel—I get now, that it’s so fucked for a thirty-year-old cop to tell a nineteen year old he won’t take her fucking fake ID if she goes to dinner with him—”

_How much, baby? If it’s reasonable, I might be able to let this one slide_. Bucky breathes in sharply. Steve squeezes his shoulder. 

“—but I just… and he wasn’t always like this, he didn’t—” She blinks away tears.

“You don’t owe anyone an explanation,” Bucky says quietly.

Sharon gives him a small smile. “I know. I just want—I don’t—people love to try to make it your fault, like you should’ve known better.”

“I know,” Bucky says quietly.

Sharon swallows and watches him a moment longer. 

“I didn’t—” She bites her lip again. “I’m so sorry for what he did to you,” she says to Bucky, and tears burn behind his eyes. “I didn’t know that’s who I was marrying, when I did. I’m not trying to defend him, I just—”

“You didn’t do it, Sharon,” Bucky whispers.

“I know,” she says, and he can tell she does. “But he’s not gonna apologize, so I will.”

Bucky smiles. “Thank you,” he whispers. Then he says softly, “Thank you for reporting him last year. That, um. That was what made me report Pierce.”

Sharon tilts her head a little, lips turning up. “Yeah. Sorry it didn’t work out how we would’ve hoped.”

Bucky grimaces a little.

“I have to go,” Sharon says, glancing down at her baby. “Take care, you guys.”

“You, too,” Bucky says. She shakes their hands, and then she’s gone, and Bucky slumps into Steve’s side, too depleted to cry, and Steve holds him until he can breathe properly again.

***

Carol comes by that night to check on them and let them know they have a warrant for his arrest and whenever he gets back to his house, there are people waiting outside to take him in. Steve is out when she arrives, picking up groceries for the week. Bucky sinks back onto the couch in relief, and Carol sits next to him and smiles. They sit quietly with it for a moment.

“What you told us,” Bucky says finally, “at the restaurant.” He’s decided that had it been him sharing that, he wouldn’t want the people he told to ignore it.

She smiles, unsurprised. “Yeah?”

“I didn’t know that,” Bucky says quietly.

“I know,” she says lightly. “I don’t usually tell people.” He waits, in case she wants to tell him what happened. She takes a breath. “Three guys I went to high school with,” she says, still calm. “I came out senior year, and no one in fucking Leesville, Louisiana wanted that. They wanted to do me a favor.” Her voice hardens to granite with bitterness.

“Jesus, Carol,” Bucky says. She sighs and pushes her hair back. “I’m so sorry.”

She smiles a little, worn and tired. “It’s okay. Really. It was a long time ago. It’s not—it doesn’t hurt that way, anymore.”

“How’d you get over it?” he asks, swallowing.

She glances at him. “I left that town and went back like, three times since then. Met Maria and told someone what happened and heard it wasn’t my fault. Went to a lot of therapy. Learned every self defense form in the book and beat the shit out of one of them.” She smiles. “You do heal, you know. Even when you think you won’t.”

“I’m so sorry, Carol,” Bucky says again. 

She squeezes his arm. “It’s okay. It doesn’t—I love my life now. It doesn’t—it doesn’t take up that kind of space for me anymore.” She smiles again.

It stuns him, a little, though it shouldn’t by now. It’s impossible to picture Carol, so untouchable and brave and self-assured, in that kind of soul-shattering pain and terror. She doesn’t look broken by it, not even now.

“Thank you for telling me,” Bucky says quietly.

She says, “Thanks for listening, Buck.” She turns to him and squeezes both his shoulders. “You’re gonna be okay. It’s not gonna feel the way it does right now forever.”

“I don’t think I’m as strong as you,” Bucky says matter-of-factly. He wishes he could be.

“That’s bullshit,” Carol says firmly. “Buck. You’re already handling it so much better than I was, what, a year after? Not to mention all the fucking… the way you handled the trial, and everything. It happened my senior year of high school and I almost flunked out of college my first year.”

“What helped, for you?” Bucky asks, his voice soft.

She sits back, considering. “Talking, mostly. To my therapist, to Maria, to my friends who I trusted the most. I didn’t handle things well, at first, you know? I had nightmares all the time and basically wouldn’t get within twenty feet of any man if I could help it. I met Maria ‘cause she tapped me on the shoulder and I almost punched her, I got so freaked out. But, um. Learning self defense made me feel a little better. Plus, like, the endorphins from it. I could show you sometime, if you want.” She smiles warmly. Bucky smiles back and nods. “More than anything, I was angry in the beginning. And now I get that I was terrified all the time, and in pain, but I was so angry for a long time. I went home that summer and found one of them and put him in the hospital for three weeks. Which felt great, but didn’t help in the end, you know?”

“I almost killed Alexander,” Bucky says quietly, forgetting, momentarily, that she’s technically supposed to be upholding the law. It’s such a relief to hear these things from someone else, somebody so much stronger and braver and more experienced than him, that he can’t help it.

She raises her eyebrows. “Self defense, though,” she tells him gently.

He shakes his head. “After that. Once he—we already won. I almost shot him anyway.”

Carol gives him a long look. “I wouldn’t have arrested you,” she says, smiling. Then her voice goes serious. “Look. I think anger is healthy, to a point, after something like that. I know that I’ll never forgive them, and I don’t feel like my life is any less complete because of that. And I’m not saying to like, go pay someone to shank him in the food line—” Bucky snorts. “—but you don’t have to ever be okay with someone who did that to you.”

“Thanks,” Bucky says softly. She smiles.

“Does therapy make a difference for you?” she asks, after a moment. Her voice has gone careful in that concerned-mom way.

“Yeah,” he says truthfully. “Yeah. It’s really helped.”

She looks relieved. “Good,” she tells him. “It helped me a lot. It basically saved me.”

“What made you go?” he asks her. Somehow, Carol strikes him as being initially resistant to the idea.

She gives him a smile. “I met Maria my first year of college, and I told her, and she spent the next four months wearing me down. And she was right, of course.” Bucky smiles at the familiarity of it.

“Steve convinced me,” he tells her. “He really—he changed everything in my life. I don’t even know if I’d still be alive without him.” It’s so strange and cathartic to say these things to someone who isn’t Steve or Jennifer. 

She smiles again, unsurprised. “I think one of the hardest things for me was realizing that I could be loved, after that. And that, you know, people did love me, and wanted to help me.”

“That’s still really hard for me,” Bucky whispers. 

“It took me a really long time,” Carol tells him. “It happens, though. You’ll get there.” She pauses briefly. “And for the record, we fucking love you, Buck.”

He smiles and drops his gaze. The inadequacy doesn’t burn as harshly as it once would have. He is loved, he is wanted, and he deserves both of those, he reminds himself.

“Can I ask you something?” Bucky says carefully.

“Shoot.”

“How, um—how can you listen to people describe that stuff, all day, every day, and not be triggered by it? I just—I mean, for me, it’s like—I can’t even watch movies, or whatever, that show rape scenes.” He swallows.

She thinks about this one. “It’s been sixteen years,” she says, after a few moments. “It’s not that it doesn’t remind me. I just… it isn’t distressing to me, in that way. I mean, when I talk to victims, I have to think about how to use what they’re saying to take down whatever asshole hurt them. There’s just not a lot of room for… comparing it, you know? It used to be harder.” She pauses. “When I’d just started in sex crimes, I had to interview a girl who… it was similar. And we were having a hard time getting anything to use against the men, and I had a pretty bad breakdown about it. I talked to Maria, though, and my shrink, and Fury, and it helps, not being alone in it. And I just… it’s so entirely separate, now.”

He nods, suddenly tearful, gratitude and sorrow and anger and exhaustion and relief all slamming him. “Thanks, Carol,” he says quietly, and he doesn’t know what for. Everything, probably.

She smiles again. “C’mere,” she says, and pulls him into a hug. He brushes tears away, and when she pulls back, she says, “You’re doing great, Bucky. You’re gonna be okay, I promise.”

She stays with him until Steve gets home, and then lets him know what’s going on, and Bucky watches his shoulders go slack in relief. She has to leave after that, so Bucky hugs her a few moments longer than usual, then curls up into Steve’s lap on the couch, small and safe and settled as Steve plays with his hair, the threats at bay. They’re okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so I’ve been pretty ahead of all my updates until now so it may be slightly slower....probably not too much but we will see......
> 
> Thank you for your beautiful comments they make me so excited to write this story love love love you all
> 
> Cafelesbian on tumblr!!!!❤️


	19. nineteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> theres some talking about abuse this chapter as a warning

Two days pass by, then three, and there is nothing. Brock and anyone in tangential connection to him has vanished. He hasn’t, Carol reports, been to his apartment in six days, nor used his phone, nor, thankfully, gone anywhere near Bucky and Steve. When Carol and Nick come by to let them know that, Bucky drops his face into his hands and Steve sets his glass down so hard it shatters. They want the waiting to be over, this awful, nauseating uncertainty, this unshakeable terror that he’s going to come back.

“Maybe he’s dead,” Steve says helpfully.

Bucky forces a laugh. They’re in bed, bodies crescented against one another. Steve is braiding Bucky’s hair. “That’d be the dream,” Bucky answers, his voice exhausted. He pauses, shoulders braced.

Steve kisses the back of his neck, and he relaxes. “What if he, like, disappeared? Went to Europe or something?” Bucky grimaces a little.

Steve swallows. Honestly, that is seeming like the more realistic theory every day that they don’t find him. Carol, the angel she is, is still focused on it, but she and Fury have other cases to work on and their boss is getting increasingly annoyed with the resources being poured into something obsolete and abstract, and he does appear to have gone undercover.

“I’ll find him,” Steve says, more to make Bucky laugh than anything, though not entirely joking. “I’ll track him down like they do in Bourne.”

Bucky huffs out another laugh, then sighs. “I just want him gone,” he whispers, voice quivering. “More than—more than anything, I just don’t want him to—to—” He swallows, voice breaking.

Steve lays an arm over his side and pulls him closer. “Even if—even if he does try something,” Steve says, voice so soft, “he won’t be able to get to us. Not with an arrest warrant out.”

They’re quiet for a moment. Outside, an ambulance tears by, shrouding the room red for a brief second.

“What if he doesn’t give up?” Bucky says, even softer. Steve knows they aren’t talking about Brock anymore.

Steve takes a breath and lays his hand over Bucky’s. “He can’t do this forever,” he whispers. “He has no one to help him, other than…” He swallows the name. “He’s in prison. For life.”

Steve feels Bucky shudder against him. “Sometimes I think—I think I’ll never stop, um. Being controlled by him. Just—just being scared ‘cause of him, and fucked up by him, and—and see some fucking old blonde guy in a suit and feel like I’m gonna be sick, and, um. The worst thing is he really _is_ still fucking up our lives. And I just—” A sob breaks in his throat. Steve holds him closer. “I don’t—I just want to forget him, but I think about him every day. Both of them. All of them.” He draws a splintered breath. “And I’m so tired and scared and angry. And I don’t want to be anymore, and I just—I don’t know how to heal when they’re still fucking doing this to us. And I’m so _tired_ of being terrified, but it’s not even like—it’s not even like I don’t have a reason to be.” He swallows. “And I’m so sorry that—that this is happening ‘cause of me.”

“Baby,” Steve whispers, and squeezes his hand. “You didn’t do this. You didn’t bring this into our life.”

“I didn’t want to,” Bucky says miserably, “but I did.”

Steve swallows. “Bucky, baby, you’re gonna be okay. I promise you. I’ve never been so sure of anything.” Bucky shrinks a little, body tensing. Steve goes on, “You’re so, so strong. I’m so—I’m so proud of you, Buck, and how good you’re doing, and I—I know you don’t always see it, but I do, okay? You’re so brave. And you—he hurt you so badly, so it still hurts. But you’re gonna be okay. You are.” He hesitates. “And—and it’s okay that you’re—that you’re not okay now, yeah? You work so hard. I love you, and I’m so proud of you. And I’m with you every step of it. To the end of the line, if you will.” Bucky laughs, breathless and whimpery. “And none of this is your fault, okay? You didn’t choose this to happen, so it wasn’t your fault. And I’d field off every psychopath in the world if it meant I got to be with you.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a long time, and Steve wonders if he said the right thing at all. Then he turns over and looks at Steve, face glittering with tears.

“You really, um. You really make it hard for me not to believe in miracles, you know.”

Steve laughs, surprised, utterly flooded with adoration, so wracked by it he doesn’t know how it doesn’t stop his heart. “Good.”

Bucky doesn’t kiss him, so Steve doesn’t lean in for one. He knows there are still moments, however rare, where that is too much. Bucky lies against his chest, and Steve kisses and plays with his hair, eases the pain for him as much as he can, even though it sometimes feels it will never be enough. Tonight, though, it is.

***

Steve, the next day, has a meeting with Clint and an appointment with Henry. He takes the subway into Manhattan with Bucky, who is meeting Wanda for class in the West Village, and kisses him goodbye before venturing further uptown.

The meeting is brisk at first; they talk about the things Steve has coming up, which aren’t many; some movie work, a New Yorker cover, and a gallery in six months. Clint offers him some things, one that he takes, the rest that he turns down.

“Steve,” Clint says thirty minutes in, pointed and exasperated, the usual tone he adopts when talking to Steve, “you haven’t done anything outside of New York in over a year.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “that was what I wanted.” He had said that to Clint two days after Bucky came back into his life. “I need to stay here for a while,” Steve told him, “nothing outside of the city.” Clint had responded, “Christ, Rogers, knock someone up?” And then, seriously, “ _Did_ you knock someone up?”

Clint sighs. “I’m turning down big things for you, Steve. Career-defining things.”

“Clint,” Steve says, “my career is already pretty defined.”

Clint leans back. “You’re gonna be known as a guy who won’t work outside of his city.”

Steve shoots back, “Guy who almost got murdered four months ago trumps that, I think.” He’s being childish, but he’s tired. He doesn’t want to be known anymore, he wants to sink quietly into the background of the public’s memory and let life unfold simply and privately in front of him and Bucky.

“You used to like traveling for work,” Clint points out.

Steve scrubs a hand down his face. “Actually, I liked not being in the city where everywhere I turned, I thought about the one person I didn’t have, and now that problem has resolved itself.” Clint grimaces.

“Are you really turning down gigantic opportunities—and paychecks—for your boyfriend? Isn’t that a little juvenile, Steve?” When Steve gives him a cold look, Clint backpedals with, “You know I think you and Bucky are great together, I just—”

“You know what happened to Bucky, right, Clint?” Steve snaps. Clint purses his lips at the ground. “You know what’s still happening to us right now? I’m not gonna up and leave him—”

“I’m not asking you to go to war, Steve. Bring him, for all I care, you guys could probably use a vacation. Just let me forward you some of these emails, okay?”

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fine.”

Appeased, Clint sits back. He’s still watching Steve, mouth pulled into an uncomfortable tight line, trying to work out what to say.

“What?” Steve presses.

Clint sighs. “I think you should consider an interview or special or article. With Bucky. Talking about it.”

“Absolutely not,” Steve says. Clint grimaces, unsurprised.

“I know. But just—it would make you guys look great, you know. It’d do wonders for your career.”

“No,” Steve snaps, furious he’s even suggesting it. “I don’t care. I’m not commodifying it and I’m not fucking doing that to Bucky.”

“Steve, we could find someone you like, it’d be a chance for you to tell your side—”

“Our fucking side, Clint? Our side is pretty goddamn obvious.”

Clint scrubs a hand down his face. “You’re far and beyond my most famous visual art client, ever, Steve. You have a reputation entirely separate from your work, and I’m just offering you the chance to address this unfortunate but unavoidable part of your fame. That’s all. I’m not gonna force you.”

“Great,” Steve says shortly, “so no.”

Clint rubs his eyebrow, but doesn’t argue.

“What about that fucking producer?” Steve asks, the sudden memory startling him into straightening up. “Has he been in touch?”

“No,” Clint tells him, “but that doesn’t mean you and Bucky aren’t gonna be all over billboards in a couple of months.”

Steve glares at him. “Can’t you stop that from happening?”

“Unless you find a way to buy the rights to the story, no.” Steve scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, kid,” Clint adds, after a moment. “It might not get off the ground, ever. I haven’t heard anything recently, if that helps.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “Okay, well. Thanks, Clint.”

Clint gives him a sympathetic look. “Take care, Steve.” Steve nods and shrugs his coat on and heads towards the door.

“Clint,” Steve says, exhausted, turning back. Clint looks up. “I need you to get a number for me.”

Clint blinks. “Sure. Who?”

Steve swallows. “Joseph Rogers.”

Clint watches him, unreadable. “Okay,” he says finally, “sure, Steve.” He’s softened considerably. “Anything you should tell me about this? Or, uh, you want to tell me?”

Steve shakes his head and looks down. “Thanks,” he says, and Clint gives him a nod, and Steve leaves.

Then he goes to therapy, where he unravels. He talks, first, about his forefront anxieties, Pierce and Rumlow and whatever shadowy corners they’re waiting behind and what they’ll do to Bucky, to them if they aren’t caught soon. Henry reassures him as much as one can. Then he talks about his father.

Steve rubs his hands together. “I asked my manager to get his number.”

“Yeah?” Henry says, sitting back. “When?”

“An hour ago.”

Henry nods. “How’d that feel?”

Steve glances down, then up. “I don’t fucking know. I don’t—I don’t even know if I’ll call it, if he gets it. I just, um. He’s dying.” The words leave a dry, coarse film in his mouth.

“Do you know what you’d say?”

Steve looks down. “I think, um. I’d have a hard time not immediately telling him to go fuck himself.”

“You don’t talk about your parents a lot here,” Henry comments.

Steve sighs. “I don’t think about them either, if I can help it.” Henry raises his eyebrows. Steve goes on, “I don’t—I don’t even want to hate them anymore. I don’t want to care. I’m—even with everything, in most ways, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. Despite their best efforts. So I want nothing to do with him.”

“So what do you want from him?” Henry asks.

He only thinks for a moment. “I want him to apologize.” He swallows. “I guess, um. If he’s gonna die, I don’t want—fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know why I care.”

“He’s your dad,” Henry offers. “You loved him, once, however complicated the relationship was. It’s only been four years since you’ve seen him. You want to give him a chance to redeem himself so your final image of him isn’t an awful one.”

Steve chokes out a bitter laugh. “All of that, yeah.”

Henry says, gently, “He might not apologize.”

“I know,” Steve answers. Then he presses his face into his hands. “Bucky asked me if I wished I’d seen my mom. And—and I do. I, uh. My dad was a pretty shitty parent, in general, uh. Not as bad as Bucky’s dad, but he made me feel pretty bad about who I was, growing up. She, um. She was a good mom. ‘Till she threw me out of the fucking house. And when she died, I—it had been three years, and I was so angry, and alone, and that anger was better than grief. And I still don’t know if she deserved grief. But who doesn’t go to their mom’s fucking funeral?”

Henry counters with, “Who kicks their nineteen-year-old son out for falling in love with his best friend?”

Steve scoffs in agreement.

“Why didn’t you go to the funeral?” Henry asks. “If you can articulate it.”

Steve blinks against tears. “I didn’t wanna see my dad or the rest of my family. I didn’t wanna see Bucky’s parents. I didn’t wanna be in a church. Maybe… Maybe I should’ve.”

“You’re under no obligation to feel guilty, Steve,” Henry says. “They were abusive parents.”

“I know.” Steve swallows. “I know.” He blinks. “What I want,” Steve begins, and finds his voice is shaking, “is for them to have—to have been better, all of them, I just—I shouldn’t—none of this should be happening, you know? I shouldn’t fucking know how to—to file taxes for over five million dollars, or how filing restraining orders works, or what my boyfriend looks like when he’s remembering the people who raped him. I just—none of this makes sense, nothing in my life—the good things and the bad things, both, I mean—me and Bucky should probably be living in a shitty studio apartment in Crown Heights with college degrees that won’t get us jobs, arguing about whether we can afford to eat out. But not—not being fucking stalked by these guys who fucking abused him! And I just—I can never forgive him. Or her. Or Bucky’s parents. But I want him to feel something, guilty, or remorseful. And then I can have closure. Even if—even if he says, you know, ‘get away from me, you fuckin’ fag.’ Then I’d know, and I wouldn’t have to wonder if I should’ve called him or not. And with her, um. I’ll never know if she felt bad.”

Henry listens. “I think you’ve made up your mind, Steve.” He pauses. “And I think it’s the right thing. I don’t want you to be angry forever. Not that you wouldn’t be justified in it, but I don’t want you to be. I’m so sorry you’re having to make this choice now. But I think, even if he hasn’t changed, you deserve the closure. Even to just tell him how you feel.”

***

Coming home to the person you love after a bad day is cleansing. You see them, and suddenly relief washes over you and makes the background noise obsolete, and your heart eases back in your chest and it’s easier to breathe. Bucky is on the couch next to Penny, reading and drinking tea, and when Steve comes in, he looks up and beams.

Steve settles next to him, kissing his cheek. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Bucky says warmly, nuzzling briefly against Steve’s face. “How was everything?”

Steve shrugs. “You know. Fine.” 

Bucky nods, squeezing his shoulder. Steve smiles, exhausted.

“Clint?”

Steve groans. “I’ll tell you later. Everything’s fine, just—” He shakes his head. Bucky nods and doesn’t push him.

“Henry?”

“Hard. Kinda.” Steve swallows. Bucky kisses his cheek and leans against him. Steve loves him so much.

“Fully going for the beard, I see,” Bucky teases him, laying a hand on his cheek. Steve grins.

“Yeah, you like it?”

“Makes you look older,” Bucky tells him, then smiles. “But yeah. I always like you.”

Steve laughs. Bucky leans in and pecks a kiss to his lips. “Wanna leave in like fifteen? I gotta change.” Steve blinks. Bucky frowns. “We’re having dinner with Scott and Wanda in the city?”

“Fuck,” Steve says, “oh, shit. I totally forgot.” He has a collection due tomorrow for a movie, some period piece in a castle that will probably win an Oscar. He’s short one painting, mostly because he’s not especially inspired by it, but he likes the team that hired him and has done work for them before and he only needs another few hours or so to finish this, and he was going to make a cup of coffee and resign himself to the studio to finish it. “Fuck, baby, I gotta—”

“—finish your painting,” Bucky says, squeezing his hand. “It’s okay.”

Steve bites his lip. “I’ll go, though, it’ll be fun. I can pull an all-nighter.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. “Will you be stressed wishing you’d gotten it done?”

Steve gives him a tired, sheepish grin. “Maybe.”

Bucky laughs. “No one will blame you if you stay. We can have them over this weekend for dinner, or something.”

“I just love you so much,” Steve tells him, and Bucky laughs. “You sure? I don’t wanna miss it.”

“‘Course, Stevie.” Bucky kisses him and smiles and stands. Steve, selfishly, wants to pull him back into his lap and ask him to stay another few minutes, let Steve bury his face in his soft lavender-scented hair and hold him, a tangible reminder that Steve has him back in his life again. There’s time for that later, though.

Bucky turns at the bottom of the staircase. Steve is watching him, face softened into something absurdly fond. He blushes.

“What?”

“I love you.”

Bucky bites his lip against a smile. “I love you more.” He heads upstairs, Penny prancing along with him, before Steve can contest that.

Steve makes his coffee and settles in front of the canvas. Bucky knocks once before he leaves. His hair is pulled up and he’s wearing a soft blue sweater of Steve’s and Steve almost abandons the painting to go with him.

“Want me to bring you dinner?” Bucky asks him, pecking a kiss to his cheek. Steve shakes his head, squeezes his arm.

“Tell them I’m sorry to miss them.”

“Will do.” He turns to leave.

“Buck,” Steve says. Bucky turns. “Be careful. Anything happens, call me, okay?”

Bucky smiles. “I will. I promise.”

“Take a car?” Steve says. There has been nothing in the last few days, but the idea of Rumlow following him and getting him alone sends a cold shudder through him. Bucky nods, then, changing his mind, crosses the room to kiss him once more. “Love you. See you later. Have fun.”

“Love you, too.”

So Bucky leaves, and Steve paints. And after the first hour, his mind starts to unwind.

He thinks about nothing, so intently that it hurts his head. He stares at the greens and blues and greys of the canvas until it bleeds through his neurons, and the emptiness of it makes him feel as if he’s falling. He’s supposed to be painting a house in flames, it’s foundations caving in, the blaze rendering it dust, and he’s been praised for being able to do complicated images like this beautifully but there’s something not right. He redoes his orange paint mix, he switches brushes, he focuses until the room starts to blur on the edges, fish eyeing until it hurts his head. 

Then, unstoppable, the thoughts burse through. His head pounds with images; he is six, building a train track with his dad; he’s eight, being comforted by his parents while Bucky is in the hospital; he’s twelve being snapped at by him for drawing instead of playing soccer while his mom defends him, he’s eighteen, hugging his parents goodbye before prom, turning the corner and pushing Bucky against the wall and kissing him breathless.

He’s nineteen, choking back a panic attack, Sam standing behind him as he stares, pleading, at his mom and dad, cold and disgusted in the kitchen, as they tell him not to come back. That one slows down and replays until it is thick and oversaturated in his head.

He blinks, hard. He goes back to painting. He checks his phone, to see if Clint got back to him.

At some point, Bucky comes home, cheeks pink from the cold, looking happy in a way that relaxes Steve a little. “Good night?” Steve asks him, and finds his voice is raw and harsh in his throat.

“Yep.” Bucky kisses him, dragging a chair over to sit next to him. “It looks great.”

It’s only half done, because Steve keeps finding himself staring blankly at it, head ringing. He smiles wearily. “Thanks, baby. How are they?”

Bucky hums noncommittally. “Wanda’s good. She and Sam are great, she’s taking some classes at Parsons.” Steve smiles. “Scott’s okay. He and Maggie are fighting, I think. Stressed about the baby.”

“When’s she due?”

“March.” Bucky rests his cheek against Steve’s shoulder. “Fucking crazy, that Scott’s gonna be a dad. He’s gonna be great.”

Steve smiles, agreeing. He is secretly and fervently wracked with relief and gratitude for Wanda and Scott for taking care of Bucky the way they had all that time ago, that he was loved and not alone. “They got a name yet?”

“Cassie.”

“Cute.”

“Mhm.” Bucky yawns, kisses Steve’s shoulder, and stands. “I’m gonna shower and head to bed, I think. You coming?”

“Gonna finish this first,” he says, “but yeah.”

“You okay?” Bucky says. Steve nods, then kisses his forehead.

“Yep.”

Bucky gives him a long look, but eventually nods, and smiles. “Love you.”

“Love you,” Steve echoes, watching him leave. He thinks about stopping, waking up early to finish tomorrow, tangling himself around Bucky and breathing him in and letting relief wash over him, but he blinks and resolves to finish now.

He finishes the painting, and it’s fine, not his best, but it doesn’t need to be and it’s a paycheck. He sets it aside and exhales, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He’s exhausted, suddenly, but he doesn’t want to stand up and shower and change. His hand is cramping. 

Steve swallows, setting the canvas aside. A moment later, he shifts to his desk and retrieves a pen, and a sheet of paper, and he begins to draw. His hand is less steady than usual, and the lines are harsher and less realistic than most of what he draws and paints, and he doesn’t quite realize it at first but he’s drawing the street he and Bucky grew up on, the buildings grim and slanted and angry.

“Steve?”

He startles; he glances up, and Bucky is watching him from the doorway, worried. He blinks a few times to clear the exhausted, grainy headache and finds it doesn’t work.

Bucky walks inside and pulls a chair up next to him. “You okay?” He lays a hand on Steve’s back and circles it lightly.

Steve nods, closing his eyes. Bucky glances at the paper, then back at him.

“Have you eaten tonight?” Bucky asks him, hand going still. Steve has to think about it, and then he realizes no, he hasn’t, and he’s starving, and that might be the source of the headache.

“No,” he says, voice hoarse. “‘S fine, I’ll have some cereal, get some sleep, baby—”

Bucky scoffs, but it’s warm. “Yeah, right.” His voice goes soft. “Stevie, come on downstairs, I’ll make you something.”

Steve tries to protest briefly, but Bucky shoots him a hard look and he shuts up and goes downstairs. He feels, abruptly, dizzy and unsettled, body craving something undetermined, and when Bucky pulls him into a hug in the kitchen, he decides maybe that was it. He closes his eyes and breathes in.

“Sit,” Bucky instructs him. “Um, we gotta grocery shop, but I can do grilled cheese?”

“Buck,” Steve says, “you don’t have to make me anything.”

Bucky swings around, pale in the refrigerator light. “Fuck’s sake, Steve,” he says gently, “you’ve made me a couple meals in the middle of the night. I don’t mind.”

Wearily, Steve smiles and relents. 

Bucky does make him grilled cheese, and also tea, and then he sits next to Steve while he eats it, one hand light on his back. 

“Wanna talk now?” Bucky asks, after a few minutes. Steve runs a hand through his hair.

“I, um.” He coughs. “I talked to Henry about my parents a lot today. I think it threw me off.”

Bucky shifts his hand to Steve’s cheek. “What about them?”

“I asked Clint to get my dad’s number.” Bucky’s eyes go bigger, but he keeps listening. “About, uh. Whether I should call him, or not.”

“Are you gonna?” Bucky asks, voice soft.

“I think so,” Steve whispers. “You asked me if I wished I saw my mom, and I do. Um. So.” He opens and closes his palms. Bucky takes his hand and squeezes. “And Clint was just—just fucking annoying today.” 

“What’d he say?”

Steve grimaces, squeezes Bucky’s hand back. “He was on my case about, ah. Not traveling for work.”

Bucky blinks. “Are you supposed to?”

Steve shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter. I used to, a bit.” Bucky’s face falters slightly. Steve squeezes both his hands and says, “Just ‘cause I didn’t like being in New York. And now I do.” Bucky looks skeptical, but he keeps listening.

“And he asked me if we’d do an interview.” Steve bites his lip. Bucky’s face floods with panic, and he adds, “I said no. One hundred percent. Not a chance.” He relaxes a little. “I just. I wish, um, everyone in the world wasn’t out to get us at once, but.” He grimaces and trails off.

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers. “I’m sorry, baby.” He pauses. Steve gives him a weary smile. “Sorry I wasn’t here tonight—”

Steve shakes his head. “You’re good. I didn’t even—it was more of a, like, slow realization of all the things that are happening, you know?”

Bucky nods. “It’s gonna be okay,” he says, voice soft, and kisses Steve’s shoulder. “Whatever happens with your dad, it’s gonna be alright. There’s—there’s nothing left for you to do, except call, you know? It’s on him to make things right.” Steve nods. “You did nothing wrong with him or your mom,” Bucky adds, giving him a small, sad smile. “There’s no one in the world as good as you, Steve.”

Steve touches his cheek. “I can think of someone.”

Bucky leans in and brushes their lips together. When they pull apart, they stand, and Steve dumps the plate and mug into the sink and they head upstairs, where Steve brushes his teeth and collapses into bed.

They lie back down, though neither of them can sleep. Bucky shifts too much and Steve is still wide awake, and eventually they wind up on their sides looking at one another, Bucky’s hand laying on Steve’s cheek.

Bucky kisses him, and Steve kisses back. It’s light and clumsy in the dark, and feels very much like high school, in a way that makes Steve wonder if this is the moment. They just kiss, hard enough that they’re both breathless, their bodies close.

Steve pulls away to kiss Bucky’s neck, leaning over him. “This okay?” he whispers. Bucky nods. He’s grasping Steve’s tee shirt tightly, breath quivering.

Steve kisses him; Bucky’s breath grows sharp and heavy, and he squeezes tighter to Steve. He lets go of his shirt and reaches down for his hand, locking their fingers together and squeezing; Steve squeezes back. They’ve done this before. Steve pulls apart, breath caught, and opens his eyes for a moment; Bucky is already looking at him, eyes washed gray in the dark, lips parted slightly. Steve feels jarred awake again, a hot thrill running through him, exhaustion forgotten. 

Steve’s other hand wanders, slow and testing, under Bucky’s shirt. He runs his fingers up his spine, and he can feel the raised, thin scars there, and maybe that’s what does it but Bucky arches out of the touch, breath caught in what Steve knows is fear, and Steve withdraws his hand and shifts off of him.

“Sorry, baby,” he whispers, “I’m so sorry, Buck.”

Bucky swallows and shakes his head. He blinks and squeezes Steve’s hand and breathes evenly and shallowly in a way that tells Steve he has to fight to stay there, to stay present and conscious. It’s happened, that they’ve been kissing and he slipped, (reflexively more than anything else, Bucky explained later) into dissociation, his eyes going gaunt and blank, his movements going mechanical and performative until Steve realized what was happening and backed off and talked him back to life. They’ve talked about it a lot; together, with Jennifer, alone with their therapists, and Steve knows it isn’t really his fault but the thought that he’d ever remind Bucky of any of them sends something white hot and grotesque writhing through him.

“Did that ever happen with other guys?” Steve asked him once, rubbing his back after pulling him out of it. Bucky swallowed and nodded into his shoulder. “What—What did they do?”

“Kept going, usually,” Bucky said bitterly. “Asked me what the fuck I was doing. Um. Sometimes they stopped. Sometimes they—they hit me.” 

“Oh, Buck,” Steve had whispered, and bit his lip until he tasted blood.

Now, Steve takes his hand, circling his thumb over Bucky’s knuckles. “You’re okay,” Steve says, “it’s alright, love. We’re here, in our house, we’re safe, you’re here with me and Penny and I’m not gonna touch you or hurt you, yeah?” He feels viscerally and unimaginably ashamed of himself, for doing something like that without asking. 

Bucky swallows. “Yeah,” he whispers, and squeezes Steve’s hand. “I’m sorry,” Bucky mumbles.

Steve shakes his head. “No need to be sorry, sweetheart.”

“You wanted to,” he whispers. Even in the dark, Steve sees his cheeks flush.

Steve swallows. “I want to when you want to.” He kicks himself for not being more careful, for not checking in the way he usually does when they’re kissing, for assuming it was going okay. He knows better.

“We can try—”

Steve shakes his head. “‘S late,” he says, and smiles. “Baby, I’m sorry. I should’ve asked, Buck.”

Steve hasn’t seen the scars on his back yet, but he’s felt them under Bucky’s tees when he rubs his back. He knows they won’t be as bad as Bucky says they are; Steve had expected worse when he finally let him see his stomach and then, recently, his thighs. They are awful because the stories behind them are awful, but they’re hardly repulsive, and anyway, Steve doesn’t think he could ever see Bucky as anything less than spectacular. He hates that Bucky sees himself as tolerable instead of wanted. He knows it’s probably belt marks. Alexander Pierce and people like him had hit Bucky with a belt, so hard, so many times that it split the skin open in a way that wouldn’t entirely repair itself. The thought makes his vision white out with rage and horror, which kills the arousal pretty fast.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Bucky whispers. 

Steve shakes his head. “C’mere, Buck,” he says, lifting his arm a little, and Bucky tucks himself into Steve’s chest. “Love you so much,” Steve tells him, kissing his hair and pulling the blanket further over them. “Thank you for everything, baby.”

Bucky has sometimes wondered if he should just have sex with Steve, rip the bandaid off, see if it feels more okay than he expects it to. They’ve had sex before, he reasons to himself, and he knows Steve would be gentle and loving and good, knows, however many times Steve swears it’s okay, that Steve misses it. He tries not to feel guilty about that, and sometimes he succeeds. He just doesn’t want to do it. It’s still hard to think of sex as something for him, to be enjoyed as much by him as Steve, but he’s trying. Steve promised him he doesn’t care how long they wait. He _promised_. Bucky swallows and closes his eyes. He wishes he could do more, he wishes he could do everything for Steve, wishes he could be the kind of boyfriend who, when the person he loves more than anything in the world is having a bad night, could make him feel better in every way, kiss him and touch him and be touched by him, warm and sensual and thrilling in the dark the way a normal couple could. 

He closes his eyes and pushes back on that thought, which is becoming easier with time and therapy and trust, but not effortless.

Bucky holds him, and is held by him, breathing along with him and giving him what he can. And it’s enough, he’s enough.

***

The next morning, their windows go opaque with fog and they sleep in a little. Steve gets up first, the distress dulled with rest and from Bucky, and he kisses his forehead and heads downstairs to make coffee. Bucky comes shortly after, wrapping his arms around Steve from behind and exhaling. Steve lays a hand over his.

“Can I tell you something?” Bucky whispers. His face is half hidden in Steve’s back, and Steve decides not to turn around.

“‘Course.” He squeezes Bucky’s hand.

Bucky hesitates. “It’s kind of horrible.”

Steve weaves their fingers together. “I can take it,” he says, smiling. Bucky shivers against his back.

“Sometimes, um—” Bucky swallows. “Sometimes they would, um, tell me I was disgusting.” Steve winces. “And—and, um. Then they’d fuck—they’d rape me anyway. So I thought—” His voice goes breathy and high. “I thought that, um, I deserved that. For being disgusting. And even though—even though I, um, don’t think that all the time anymore, sometimes I—I do think I’m, um, disgusting and bad.” Bucky’s whispering now, barely. Steve fights the urge to argue with him. He listens. “And, um, it’s—sometimes, you’re kissing me and I get scared that if, um, if I were to—to undress or—or whatever, you’d see I was disgusting too, and, um, you’d think I deserved that and—and you’d… hurt me—” He talks faster, tripping over the words. “And—and I know—I know you wouldn’t, ‘cause you’re so, so good to me, Steve, it’s not you, I just—sometimes I think I’m so gross that even you’d hate me.”

Steve bites his lip. “Buck,” he starts, “oh, baby. You’re just—you—no one should ever have hurt you. You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, love, I could never think otherwise.” He swallows. “And I’ll never hurt you. I swear on fucking everything.”

Bucky is quiet for a full minute, but he doesn’t pull away. “You—” he begins, and swallows, “you haven’t seen everything.”

Steve kisses his fingers. “I’ve seen the scars, Buck. They aren’t—it’s not—you’re always _you_ , no matter what. None of them are—are disgusting, or bad, or anything, okay?”

Bucky’s breath quivers for a beat. “You know how, um, you can look at solar eclipses before, or after they happen, or with glasses, but if you look at the whole thing, it’ll burn your eyes?” Steve blinks, turning to look at him. “I think—I think that’s probably what I’m like.”

It takes Steve a moment, and even once he understands, he doesn’t say a word. Even on the scale of horrible things Bucky has said about himself, the insinuation that he’s so disgusting he has to be looked at in pieces is appalling.

Bucky winces, looking down. “I’m gonna get dressed,” he mumbles, pulling back from Steve and shoving his hands in his pockets.

***

Bucky gets downstairs, and Steve is standing in the same place, staring at him. He feels exposed. He ducks his head.

“You’re right about that comparison,” Steve says finally. Bucky looks up, cheeks burning. Maybe this will be the moment he’s been waiting for, the thing that breaks even Steve. He braces himself. “In that you’re the sun.”

***

They don’t talk about it again until that night. They stay in, quiet and comfortable in the studio, and plan when to buy their Christmas tree and dig out their lights and ornaments and order pizza at eleven and then take a bath and by the time they’re getting in bed, Bucky feels brave and loved enough to do it.

He pulls his shirt off without waiting and without looking at Steve. He hasn’t been this exposed to anyone in over a year, and it makes him shudder. He crosses his arms over his chest and closes his eyes and waits.

Penny clambors up in front of him, and he unclenches his fingers from his biceps to rub her neck. He feels slightly sick, knowing Steve is staring at the jagged, discolored marks there, angry, pale lines that gray and flush on the edges, skin that looks sickly and unnatural. He bites his lip against the urge to cover them up again. Guys would sometimes comment on them. Sometimes it made them think it was okay to add to it. Other than his doctor, though, no one has seen them (And mercifully, Dr. Christine Palmer hadn’t said anything about it when she had, hadn’t even looked at him differently, just scanned them and let him get dressed again. Jennifer gave him her name when he told her how much anxiety the idea of seeing a male doctor, or a doctor who would make him talk about the abuse gave him). 

He hears Steve draw a small breath, and he flinches. Behind him, Steve shifts closer, and lays a light hand on his shoulder.

“Can I hug you?” Steve asks him, voice so soft. Bucky nods, trembling a little.

Steve wraps his arms around him from behind, pulling him flush against him, chin tucked against Bucky’s shoulder. He kisses the side of his neck and his collarbone and his shoulder.

“Breathe, Buck,” Steve tells him, and Bucky realizes he has been biting it back. “In and out, love, that’s it.”

He exhales, and without realizing it, chokes out a sob. He goes limp against Steve, his body small and afraid, and Steve holds him so close and so steady, telling him all the things he needs to hear without saying it, I love you, you aren’t disgusting or untouchable, I see you and I’m still right here. Bucky folds his hands over Steve’s and squeezes, and Steve kisses his cheek.

“Pierce?” Steve whispers.

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut and nods. “And Rumlow. And some others. But mostly him.” He swallows. Steve keeps holding him, never letting him go. “You, um. You don’t have to—to do this, Steve, I know they’re gross, I can just—just keep them covered up—” _Deformed_ , Alexander called him once. He hasn’t ever forgotten it. It’s still what he thinks, sometimes, when he sees the scars, or when he takes off his prosthetic and thinks about men squeezing and caressing his arm, telling him what a freak he was.

Steve takes a breath, keeps cradling him. “Bucky,” he says, so softly, “it’s not—you—baby, you’ve got a warped view of it. It’s not—Buck, the way you talked about it, I expected it to be—they aren’t—”

“They’re hideous, Steve,” Bucky whimpers. “All of them are, the ones on my stomach and thighs and arm, too, I hate them—”

Steve shushes him, kissing his cheek again and pulling him closer. Tears slip past Bucky’s eyelashes, landing on their hands.

“They really, really aren’t, baby,” Steve promises him. “You’ve got some scars, Buck. It doesn’t make you disgusting. You’re still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.” He pauses. 

“How can you not hate them?” Bucky asks him.

Steve hesitates. “I hate that you have them,” he says, after a moment, “I hate—I hate that you ever got hurt. But I just—like I said, baby, I just see you. I love you so, so, so much, Buck.” Steve swallows. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. Bucky closes his eyes and squeezes Steve closer. “You’re so extraordinarily, astonishingly strong.”

Bucky doesn’t answer. He lets himself stay there in Steve’s arms until being undressed becomes too much, and when he shifts away, Steve pulls back and waits for him to pull his shirt back on.

“Hey,” Steve says, touching Bucky’s shoulder, then his cheek. “Thanks for trusting me, baby.”

Bucky doesn’t lift his eyes, but he takes Steve’s hand where it’s light against his face. “Thanks for loving me.”

“Best thing I’ve ever done,” Steve says, lips quirking up. Bucky pulls him into a hug, graceless and pathetic, and clings to him, and being held and rocked quiets the things in his head while everything outside of the two of them whirls closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> weekly reminder that if you comment my heart is full of love for you 
> 
> cafelesbian on tumblr see you in 1-2 ish weeks my darlings


	20. twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry sorry sorry for the delay my life has been very hectic and my mental health has been not good but here we r
> 
> Thank you max danseuing on tumblr for answering my qs abt for service dogs this chapter!! You’re wonderful

Trying to continue on normally with their lives in the purgatory of what’s happening with Rumlow and Pierce is difficult, but they do it. Like everything in life, Steve supposes, it can be adjusted to, and so they adjust. At the restraining order hearing that Rumlow didn’t show up to, the judge made an irritated remark about his time being wasted and granted it to Bucky, and all of the anxiety around that felt suddenly pathetic. They bring home and decorate a Christmas tree, they go out to dinner with their friends, they begin, finally, to let their guard down. There is a weak bite of nausea for Bucky each time he thinks about how Rumlow is out there, consequence-free of what he’s done, but at least he is gone. 

Historically, he knows better than to believe that. But he thinks, naively, that maybe the universe is done punishing him, that surely, no more harm can befall one person.

They go out late for Italian one night. It’s cold in a way that permeates their skin, fogging their breath and the restaurant windows, but they hold hands on the walk over anyway, slipping their woven fingers into the pocket of Steve’s jacket for warmth. It’s a nice night. They sit under lit candles and hold hands across the table and share chocolate mousse and laugh.

Steve’s phone buzzes during dinner, but he doesn’t check it until they’re pulling on coats to leave. It’s a text from Clint.

 _Hey, Steve. Didn’t get the number you wanted but found his estate lawyer, who says you can call him to talk. Good luck with this_. Then, attached, the number.

Steve swallows and reads it again. Across from him, Bucky is watching him.

“Everything okay?”

Steve holds the phone out to him. He reads the message, then bites his lip.

“Wow,” Bucky says, taking a breath and tucking himself into Steve’s side, bracing his hand on Steve’s back. “Alright.”

“Alright,” Steve echoes, pulling Bucky in closer, shuddering in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.

“Are you gonna call him?” Bucky asks. They’ve started walking, their pace even and synced. He’s looking up at Steve, eyes bright and worried.

Steve swallows. “Yeah,” he says, voice thick. “At least, uh. To get a sense of things.” He finds himself relieved, suddenly, that his dad isn’t the first one he has to talk to. The one, paper thin degree of separation makes things feel more manageable.

Bucky nods. “Tonight?”

“Tomorrow,” Steve decides. Bucky squeezes his arm.

“I’m proud of you,” he whispers. 

Steve kisses him, cold and starlit in the heavy winter evening. Things, he tells himself, will always be okay for them.

“So Clint wants you to travel for work,” Bucky says, a few moments later. They pass a pair of teenagers pressed up against a bare wall, kissing each other warm again, and share a smirk.

Steve sighs. “Yeah. I don’t have to listen to Clint, though. I like being home.”

“But you used to do it.”

“I mean, sometimes.” He casts Bucky a look.

“Where?” Bucky presses.

“I don’t know, I’ve gone to Boston. I went to LA once, it was terrible.” Bucky laughs. “A couple of cities for some commissioned street art things. I really do like being here the most.”

“What are you being offered?”

Steve had skimmed the email Clint sent him and then ignored it. “Mm, a couple of exhibits. One in San Francisco, I think, uh. One in Chicago.”

Bucky swallows. “How long?” He will never, ever tell Steve not to do something for work, but the thought of Steve being gone for long (or not long) sends something heavy and cold swooping in his stomach.

“It’s usually two or three weeks, depending on the offer,” Steve says. “I mean, sometimes it’s just a few days, ‘cause I can send stuff in and then go right before it opens, but sometimes if I gotta do things there, it’s longer.”

Bucky bites his lip. “You’re not saying no ‘cause of me, right?”

Steve glances at him. “I mean, only in the sense that I’d rather be here with you in Brooklyn than somewhere else alone.” He smiles.

Bucky swallows. “You—you shouldn’t say no to things ‘cause you think I can’t handle it, Steve,” he says, voice quiet.

“Buck,” Steve says, “you do know that I don’t want to be apart from you either, right? This is as much for me as you.”

Bucky looks down, a faint smile tugging at his lips.

“You could come, though,” Steve offers, tentative. Bucky looks up, eyebrows raised. “If you wanted, we could make it a vacation.”

Bucky smiles. “Yeah?” They turn onto eighth avenue, streetlights falling away and shadows sweeping over them.

“Sure,” Steve says, excited now. “I mean, I could ask Clint to get me something anywhere. Or we could pick one of the ones he already offered.”

Bucky thinks about this for a moment. “San Francisco, huh?”

Steve grins. “Yeah, they offered me an exhibit. We could rent an apartment there and go to the beaches. Road trip out to Redwood.”

Bucky snorts. “Redwood is nowhere near San Francisco, Steve.”

“Hence the road trip part.”

“Let’s look into it,” Bucky says, laughing, raising himself up to kiss Steve’s cold skin.

Steve tightens his arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “Okay.” They’re still a few blocks from home now, faces lit by an almost full moon and the glittering Christmas lights that some families have strung up, the faint glow of trees in their windows. It has gone, abruptly, very quiet, a faint wail of an ambulance in the distance emphasized and distorted.

Bucky sees him first, but doesn’t know right away that it’s him. It’s too dark to tell. A man’s figure slips past cars across the street, his stride heavy and quick, but even when he makes his way to their side Bucky doesn’t realize. Penny slips in front of them, but Steve is the one who blinks and squints and then, a few yards from him, stops walking and grips Bucky’s shoulder until he stops too. His eyes have widened, frantic breath clouded in the air, shoulders thrown back.

“We gotta go, Bucky,” Steve says, voice shaking.

“What—” Bucky begins, scared, and then realizes who he is looking at. He stumbles and makes his way towards them. Bucky has gone still with panic, and Steve shoulders in front of him a little, body drawn to a threat. 

“Hey, James,” Brock sneers, “Steve.”

There’s something wrong with him, Bucky thinks, drugs or alcohol. He staggers, heavy steps towards them that make Steve and Bucky step back. Penny stands in front of them, head lifted. Bucky tugs her in a little closer.

He’s not alone. There’s another guy behind him, quiet and imposing, his face shadowed too much for Bucky to see if he knows him. He doesn’t say anything, just watches them.

“Get out of the way,” Steve tells him, voice low and soft. “Or I’ll crack your fucking head open on this sidewalk.” 

“That so, Stevie?” Brock sneers, looking between them. Bucky is holding Steve’s arm so hard his nails must imprint on his skin. “C’mere, then. Think your boyscout can take me, Bucky?”

Bucky flinches, and Steve steps in and Bucky pulls him back, so scared, because he knows Steve probably can’t take him, that the one time Steve did punch him it was only because Brock had allowed him to.

“Steve, please,” Bucky whispers.

“Steve, please!” Brock mocks, high and cruel, and laughs. “That’s awfully familiar, sweetheart.”

Bucky shivers, and Steve, somehow, gets himself more directly in front of him. Brock laughs again. 

“Yeah, Rogers, give it your best shot.” He sneers at them. “James, you wanna suck the winner off? Seems fair to me.”

Steve doesn’t lunge for him because Bucky has his arm close to restrained, both hands coiled to steel around his wrist and bicep. Bucky flinches at the words.

“Get the fuck out of here, Rumlow,” Steve spits. His whole body is geared up to fight, and he wants to so badly he’s shaking, but Bucky is letting him know he doesn’t want him to so he doesn’t throw a punch.

Brock laughs again, then staggers. “You sure you don’t wanna get out of the way, Stevie? This fucking whore’s not worth what’s about to happen to you if you don’t move.” Steve doesn’t move. “I’d even be willing to share, if you like. You got two good holes, right James?”

“Bucky,” Steve says, voice low, “let go.”

“Steve, don’t,” Bucky whispers, in tears, “you’re—you’re gonna get hurt.”

“I’ll give you the first swing, Stevie,” Brock taunts him. He throws his weight back, then forward, grinning. 

Steve snarls, “Go fuck yourself, you degenerate piece of shit.” 

Rumlow looks mock disappointed. 

“Why are you fucking doing this?” Bucky manages, his voice hoarse and small.

Brock smirks. “Alex says hi,” he says. “I’m just the messenger.”

Steve grits out, “I’m gonna tear you apart.”

“Big words there, Stevie,” Brock sneers. Then he rears back and swings.

He catches Steve square in the face, and the force of it knocks even Bucky back, heaving, breath knocked away.

“ _Stop_ ,” he chokes out, before he realizes what’s happening. He’s staggered to his knees, but when he lifts his head, he realizes Steve is aiming the next hit, enraged and fearless and impulsive, but he’s still reeling from Brock’s punch and he doesn’t have the strength behind it he needs and he lands it too high, only sending Brock stepping a few feet to the side.

A band of light from a car too far down the block cuts across Rumlow’s face, and he looks wild, bloodthirsty and terrifying, dark, cruel eyes on Steve.

Bucky hurls to his feet and towards them, and he doesn’t get a step before the other guy stops him, so violently and abruptly that his vision pops briefly to black. He gets him in a chokehold, steel, heavy arms that don’t budge, and it occurs too late to Bucky that in his other hand he’s got Penny by the collar, yanked up so that she can’t get any leverage with her front paws, whimpering and barking and bucking in vain. The panic of a man’s body against him and choking him sends Bucky into hysteria, terror coursing quick and pointed through his blood, and he gags and then he screams, and the guy clamps a hand over his mouth and snaps, “Shut your fucking mouth!”

Steve jerks his body around to look at Bucky, and his eyes go enormous with panic, and by then whatever upper hand Steve could have ever grasped is gone. Brock pulls back and punches him again, somehow harder, so Steve’s head snaps to the side and he doesn’t reorient himself and by then it’s too late, Brock hits him again and he’s down. Even high or drunk or psychotic, Rumlow still knows how to fight and how to defend himself more than Steve ever has.

It’s so dark and Bucky is struggling so hard he can make out little more than flashes in the dark, their bodies silhouetted and shadowed. Bucky is sobbing and yelling and bargaining, and the guy doesn’t flinch. So he watches as Rumlow leans over Steve and draws his fist back and brings it down on him again, lead heavy and unforgiving.

Somewhere, in the parts of Bucky’s mind so saturated in blood they will never be scrubbed clean, is every time he has ever been hit, and deeper than that, every time he’s ever been hit by Brock Rumlow. Pain, for four years, was so familiar that it almost numbed eventually, that at least, Bucky could know what to expect, know that eventually, it would be over.

There’s an endlessness to watching Brock beat Steve that Bucky thinks may destroy him. Steve’s body is limp and motionless, and Brock keeps bringing his hands down, motions so quick and brutal they seem directed, except Bucky has been hit by him like that before and he knows the excruciating pain of it.

Brock leans over him and hits him, again and again. Bucky will never forget the sound it makes, something so solid and grotesque and unmistakable. He realizes he has gone half limp, shut down with shock and terror, and the guy has loosened his hands on him and when he realizes that, Bucky kicks back as hard as he can.

He gets him in the kneecap, and the guy gasps and jumps back. Hands freed, Bucky punches him.

He realizes, insanely, he’s never punched anyone before. It’s hard enough, because the guy doubles back and brings his hands over his face. Jack Rollins, Bucky thinks vaguely, but the knowledge barely skims the surface of his mind. The prosthetic hurts him more than Bucky, and he launches himself towards where Brock is bent over Steve and manages, through hands shaking so badly they’ve gone numb, to uncap the Mace that Carol gave him ages ago.

He doesn’t know how he uses it, only the before and after, and after he sprays it, Brock is knocked aside and doubled over, clutching his face and howling with agony. Vaguely, Bucky registers that other people have begun to arrive, drawn out of their pretty Park Slope brownstones by screaming.

“Fuck!” Jack snarls, and hauls Brock to his feet, but Bucky doesn’t even register them because all of the air has been flung out of his lungs.

“Steve,” Bucky whimpers, his voice high and terrified. He collapses beside him, and tries to touch his face but, horrified, draws his hands back. “S-Steve, Steve, baby, oh, god, Steve—” He cups his chin and softly as he can and tilts his head back. “Steve, Stevie, open your eyes, baby, you-you’re okay, Steve—” Someone crouches beside him and says something concerned that Bucky doesn’t hear.

“Call 911,” he hears himself gasp, and there is a vague noise of agreement. Someone asks him what happened.

“Steve,” he whispers, and realizes he’s sobbing. “Steve, babe, Steve, wake up, c’mon, it’s Bucky.” He kneads his fingers lightly over Steve’s cheek and forehead.

“He have a pulse?” someone asks.

Bucky, his voice twisted into something he’s never heard before, not even in the moments of his most hysterical terror, not even when pain sparked through him and crescendoed into a bonfire, screams, “I don’t know!”

Penny is pawing at Steve’s arm and whining. Bucky presses two fingers gingerly just below Steve’s chin, but his hand is trembling too badly to know. “I don’t know,” he gasps again.

A woman, very gently, kneels next to him and copies the action, manicured hands steady. “He does,” she confirms, giving Bucky a nod, and he begins to cry again, undone with relief, but not enough. “Ambulance and cops are on their way,” a different woman says.

“The guys who did this,” another man says, and Bucky realizes it’s directed at him, “do you know where they went?”

Bucky shakes his head. Everything is too much, the air around him turned radioactive with terror, and Steve still won’t move and nothing else in the world could possibly permeate his head except for that fact. Steve’s face is so bloodstained he looks as if he’s been dunked in it, and nothing, not a flutter of his eyelashes or choked gasp or air, suggests he’s alive, but Bucky can’t think about that because, he’s suddenly sure, thinking it will make it true.

Bucky manages, somehow, to shift Steve’s head onto his lap so he isn’t sprawled across concrete. His chest rises briefly with a breath, and Bucky, unconscious of anything he’s doing, leans his head down, sobbing, and whispers, “Baby, you’re okay, you’re okay, Steve, c’mon.”

“Can we call someone else for you?” the same woman asks.

“Wanda,” Bucky says, and then realizes she has no idea who that is, so he shakes his head. There are still four or five people around, and even though Bucky doesn’t want them there he thinks if they leave Brock will come back to them, his hurricane movements and cruel body too much, so he lets them stay. Someone mumbles, “Is that Steve Rogers?” and Bucky completely ignores him.

The cops and ambulance arrive at the same time, quick and businesslike with their movements, brushing Bucky firmly but not unkindly aside. He lets them. He’s gone back to feeling like his soul has torn itself from his body. 

“You coming, sir?” one of the EMTs asks Bucky, and he nods, getting to his feet on legs that have been reduced to quivering pillars of sand, and tugs Penny numbly along.

“Service dog,” he hears himself explain. No one challenges it.

“Sir,” one of the cops says, “we need your statement—”

“Go fuck yourself,” Bucky spits, rage heaving in his chest. “If you fucking people had done your job in the first place, then he would be fine and you wouldn’t need a statement.” He looks bewildered. “Brock Rumlow,” Bucky snarls, “that’s the guy who did this. He’s one of your worthless fucking people, so I don’t expect your little cult to do anything.” He’s startled by the words. He doesn’t think he’s ever spoken to anyone like that, not even the endless list of people in his life who’d deserved it. He waits for the paramedics to gesture him in and he turns away from two shaken cops and crumples into a seat in the back of the ambulance.

***

They leave him in the waiting room, promising vaguely to update him. Someone asks him questions that some automated part of Bucky’s brain allows himself to answer. Steve Rogers, twenty-three, yes, we knew the person who did this, no, he hasn’t been arrested, no, they haven’t given a statement to police, yes, Bucky thinks Steve is going to want to press charges, no, he has no history of severe illnesses or injuries.

“He had asthma when he was a kid,” Bucky hears himself say, his voice tinny and faint. She gives him a pitying look, then asks about their relationship, and Bucky manages to access the knowledge that sometimes, hospitals only let immediate family in to see patients, even though that’s probably mostly done only in soap operas and in this case, he doubts they’d enforce it anyway, but he manages to tell her they’re engaged, just in case. He stands there, stunned, shivering like his body is about to fly apart, until she gets him to sit down and asks him if he can call anyone.

“Is—is—is he gonna be okay?” Bucky manages. A landslide shakes itself loose in his chest.

She says, “I’ll tell you as soon as we know anything.”

He looks down and realizes his hands are soaked with blood, that it must be on his face and neck too by now. He wants to see Steve.

He must call Carol, because she arrives sometime later, hair mussed and looking bleary in her faded Cornell sweatshirt. “Oh, Bucky,” she says, and wraps her arms around him and then he collapses, burying his face in her shoulder and crying like a fucking baby, breathless, chest-heaving sobs that only Steve ever sees from him. Carol hugs him and rubs his back and says, “I’m so, so sorry,” gentle and maternal while he breaks down and then, when he has stopped hyperventilating enough, asks him what happened.

He doesn’t really tell her so much as gasps and whimpers and cries through it, but she gets the gist, and she hugs him again and says “Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry,” then picks up her cell phone.

She calls someone, and they don’t answer. She bites her lip and makes another call.

“Hey,” she says, to whoever is on the other end, “Rumlow showed his face again. Can you get someone we trust to go wait out Sharon Carter’s house?” They say something, and she says, “Yeah, I tried her, she’s not answering. I’ll try her again.” A beat. “At the hospital with Bucky. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Okay, you too. Thanks, Fury.”

Bucky doesn’t lift his head from his hands, but he registers Carol’s palm light on his shoulder. “Have they said anything about him?” she asks. “Any condition at all?”

Bucky shakes his head. “I don’t—I don’t kn-know an-anything.” He’s hiccuping through the words, crying again, and Carol rubs between his shoulders. “He—he—he hit him s-so hard, Carol, he w-wasn’t moving at all—”

“Breathe, Buck,” Carol says softly, and he tries but he can’t stop playing back the sound of Rumlow’s fist against Steve’s skull and he keeps crying. There’s a note of panic in her voice.

Wanda and Scott get there what feels like several distorted hours later but what must be only about thirty minutes. They must have been together. He doesn’t remember calling them. He doesn’t remember most of it, actually. No one will tell him when he can see Steve or where he is or if Bucky should be bracing himself for his heart to uproot itself from his chest, and it’s so bright that a headache begins to whine and the Thursday night Methodist Hospital emergency room is grim and stale and he doesn’t know where the fuck Brock has gone or if he’s going to come back. 

“What happened?” Wanda asks him, stricken. She’s pale. She hates hospitals even more than most people, and Bucky wants to apologize for dragging her here but he can’t find the words. Carol gives them a brief, pointed version of it so Bucky doesn’t have to, and he nods along numbly.

“I called Sam,” Wanda says, “he’s on his way.” Bucky vaguely remembers asking her to do that. “Jesus fucking Christ, Buck. I’m sorry.” And he starts to cry again.

“Can we do anything?” Scott asks him. He manages a mute shake of his head

“You—you didn’t have to come—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Wanda replies, squeezing his shoulder. 

He doesn’t have it in him to talk anymore. They wait—Wanda texts Natasha, who’s upstate with Peggy and her family until Monday, and Bucky somehow gets enough control over his permanently trembling hands to text Jennifer and Henry and they wait. Time passes until the room becomes harsh streaks of gray and a grinding, insistent wave of noise and Bucky thinks if he’s there any longer he’ll break open.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Bucky mumbles. He leaves Penny and gets himself up and into the tiny stall, where he staggers against the wall and presses his hands over his eyes.

The reality of this hits him, suddenly and with such force that he can’t breathe. He needs Steve, he needs him so intensely and completely that when his brain begins to unravel into what this could mean, he starts gasping again, short and hysterical.

He thinks, insanely, about a conversation they had almost a year ago, in the old apartment. Bucky had walked into the living room where Steve was cutting open a package and raised an eyebrow.“I, um, I ordered one of those weighted blankets,” Steve explained, then swallowed, almost sheepish. “I was reading about them, and, um, people say they’re good for—for PTSD, um, the way that they—I don’t really get the physics, but, uh, some people say they help with nightmares?” Bucky stared at him; Steve raked a hand through his hair. “Anyway, um, yeah, we don’t have to—we can just try, if—if you want—” Then he broke off, because Bucky crossed the room and threw his arms around Steve’s neck so fiercely that Steve stumbled a few steps back before wrapping his arms around Bucky’s waist and holding him back, and Bucky blinked back tears because back then, every day had still been a countdown to when Steve was going to change his mind and throw him back out again, and Steve had loved him enough to research the ways to reconstruct his irreparable brain and try for him and it was just so much.

Every single good thing he has today is because of Steve. Every absurd, undeserved luxury, all of the healing he has managed despite everything working against it, every piece of him that he’s managed to get back, all of his safety and joy, that’s Steve. And tonight, Bucky watched him get pummeled into the concrete because of men who wanted him and he doesn’t know if he’ll make it now and he was never enough, he never gave Steve a fraction of what he deserved and now he may never be able to and he is homesick for two hours ago when they were laughing about going to California.

He realizes he’s doubled over with sobs. Suddenly and vividly, the rage hits, all at once. It’s almost as bad as the fear. He wants their lives made into a wasteland, Brock and Alexander and the freak who had held Bucky back today. He finds himself blinded by anger that there isn’t more that he can take from them, a possible prison sentence if he’s lucky for Rumlow and the other guy, probably fucking nothing from Pierce who still, behind steel for the rest of his life, is finding a way to take Bucky’s life from him. _Alex says hi_ , Brock had sneered, whatever that had meant, whatever way he was destroying Bucky this way. He’s too tired and frightened to analyze it.

He walks back out into the hideously bright room and towards his group. Before she sees him, he hears Wanda say, to Scott and Carol, “The universe cannot fucking do this to him.”

***

The cops show up. Bucky goes momentarily slack with terror when he looks up and there are two uniformed guys striding towards him, _he’s here_ turning his head to sizzling hot oil, but Carol braces a light hand on his shoulder and they come into focus and it isn’t him at all, but the woman and man who he’d yelled at earlier. He slumps back.

“James?” the man says. He winces. “We need to ask you about what happened to your friend.”

“Boyfriend,” Bucky whispers, even though it doesn’t really matter.

Carol flashes her badge at them. “I’ve got it.”

The woman says, “Um, Detective, this isn’t a sex crimes case—”

“All due respect,” Carol says shortly, “you have no idea what this case is about. There’s an arrest warrant out for the man who did it, so if you want to help, track him down. Otherwise, go back to writing traffic tickets.” They look bewildered, and she adds, slightly more patient, “It’s connected to a case I’m on. I’m happy to talk to your superior if there’s a problem.” 

They go back and forth for a few more minutes, but Bucky stops listening. He has begun bargaining. _I’ll be better,_ he thinks, and recognizes the absurdity of it, from someone who couldn’t be any less religious, but he can’t stop, _I’ll be so much better to him, I’ll stop being selfish, I’ll be patient, I’ll stop making him need to take care of me, I’ll have sex with him, I’ll be good just please, please, please don’t take him from me._

Wanda lays a hand on his back, and he starts to cry again. This is coming at him in tidal waves, flat and motionless then too much all at once, and there is still a surrealness to his being here that he can’t shake. He finds himself staring down, hands limp and quivering in his vision, feeling as if he’s observing this from somewhere else, through a dream or some fisheye warped movie screen, that soon the spell will be broken and it will end.

Regardless of how badly this ends, Steve suffered for him. The thought is almost too much to bear, compressing Bucky’s lungs into something tight and useless as he replays the night again.

There’s no allotment, no maximum quota of suffering. One terrible thing, or two, or one hundred, does not prevent you from more terrible things in the future. Sometimes they enable each other, trauma begetting more trauma until you either pull out of the wheel or are crushed underneath it.

“Hey,” Wanda says softly. Bucky blinks and lifts his head. She’s holding a damp paper towel, and she says, “You’ve got some blood under your eye.” She sits next to him and brushes it over his cheek, very gentle.

“Thanks,” Bucky mumbles, voice reduced to ash. He’s shivering like he’s feverish, and Wanda pulls his coat around his shoulders again.

Sam barrels in looking devastated and tries to get caught up, even though there’s nothing new. Always responsible, he begins rattling off information about head injuries and brain damage that’s meant to reassure everyone but that really makes Bucky feel like someone is holding something searing and white hot against his chest.

“Shut _up_ , Sam,” he snaps. Startled, Sam stops. “You’re not a fucking brain surgeon and you d-didn’t see how bad it was.”

“He’s gonna be fine, Bucky,” Scott says, and Bucky feels like he has shattered some paper thin wall of glass that had been standing between Steve and the worst possible outcome.

“Yeah,” Sam says briskly, “he’ll be joking about this tomorrow.”

“Don’t say that,” Bucky snaps, “you have no fucking idea if he’s gonna be fine! You didn’t see him get the shit beat out of him!” Scott pulls back, bewildered and apologetic, and Bucky sinks in on himself, ashamed and exhausted and afraid in a way that suspends his heart in ice water as he waits. Scott and Wanda and Sam, he realizes, are terrified too, are just trying to convince themselves that their friend is going to be fine. Irrationally and childishly, he thinks that none of them are as afraid as he is, that none of them need Steve as vitally as they need to breathe the way he does, that if the unthinkable happens, they will grieve and cry and miss him, but their lives will go on, whereas his will come to a halt as abruptly as if someone had sliced open his veins and ended it that way. He can’t even think it, cannot entertain the unspeakable possibility of losing Steve, because if any of them do it will surely be willed into existence and he isn’t strong enough even to imagine it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, in tears again. “I’m sorry.” And they tell him that it’s okay, that they know he’s scared, that everything will be fine, and they just fucking wait, and time becomes metal scraping against metal. Bucky wants to be sick.

“Shit,” Carol hisses at one point, and turns on them. She squeezes Bucky’s shoulders, face soft and apologetic. “Fury’s got him. He asked me to meet him.”

There’s a hollow, terrified rattle in Bucky’s chest. “Okay,” he says, and swallows. “Yeah, of course.”

She doesn’t want to leave. “I’m gonna call Maria and tell her to get down here.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Bucky says weakly. “Monica’s at home.” She glances around at them.

“You should have an adult here.”

“We’re all—”

“Someone old enough to run for president,” Carol clarifies, with a tired smile.

“I’m thirty,” Scott offers.

She gives Scott a long, weary look. “Fine,” she says, “good enough.” She runs a hand through her hair. “I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s happening. Keep me updated on everything here, ‘kay?” She hugs him, tighter and longer than usual, and gives everyone else a brief goodbye and takes off.

More time passes, maybe a few hours or maybe ten minutes. Bucky’s phone dies. He realizes, at one point, that he has been squeezing his wrist so tightly that the skin has turned burgundy there, and he flinches and pulls his hand back and he thinks about Steve, a mask of blood over his face, head twisted sickeningly to the side, and he thinks about himself, looking like that underneath Pierce or Brock or any number of the terrible men he has known and what he has brought onto Steve so many times now, and he finds himself rocking.

A doctor comes out and glances around, then approaches them. “You’re here for Steve Rogers?”

Bucky’s heart unspools itself to thread. “Yeah.”

She fixes her gaze on Bucky. “You’re the fiance?” He nods. ““He’s doing better.” Bucky’s entire body shudders with such relief that tears burn against his eyes again. “His nose is broken, and he needed stitches in his eyebrow, but it doesn’t seem like he has any severe brain damage or internal bleeding or bruising. He’s lucky.” She pauses. “He’s on a lot of pain meds, but he should be awake in a few hours.”

“So he’s okay?” Sam says, and only then does Bucky realize how truly terrified Sam had been.

“There are a few things we’re going to have to assess when he wakes up,” she tells him, “but he’s not at any serious risk right now.”

“Can I go in?” Bucky says. His voice is thin and exhausted. She nods.

“He won’t be up for a while, but you can wait if you like.” She glances between them. “Two at a time, though.” 

Bucky turns to them, too battered and tired to work this out. Wanda squeezes his and Sam’s shoulders and says, “Go. We’ll be out here.”

So they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for continuing to comment and be lovely, you have no idea how much it means to me
> 
> cafelesbian on tumblr pls feel free to say hello


	21. twenty-one

The hospital room is instantly too much. Sparse and flat and thick with the stale smell of chemicals, it gives throws Bucky into immediate nausea, and when he looks at Steve he feels so tired he has to lean in the doorway. Steve, knocked out by pain and drugs, is frighteningly still, too-heavy breaths the only indication that he’s alive, face glazed over with bruising.

Bucky begins to cry again. Sam, next to him, bites his lip hard and gets him to sit. They don’t say anything for some time. Bucky drops his head into his hands and works at getting his heart to stop shredding itself in his chest, and finally Sam ruptures the miserable quiet.

“Hey,” Sam whispers, looking over, “you doing okay?”

Bucky nods. “They didn’t really touch me.”

Sam keeps watching him. “Emotionally, you okay?”

Bucky blinks tears back. “I have—I have to just be—be there for him.”

Sam places a hand on his shoulder, warm and bracing. He waits for Bucky to nod before he touches him. “This happened to you, too.”

Tears pour over Bucky’s lashes; Penny places her head in his lap. “This is my fault.”

“Bullshit,” Sam says. “You stopped him.”

He swallows back a sob. “I’ve brought every bad thing into his life.”

Sam shakes his head. “That’s not true, Buck. It just isn’t.”

“Look at him, Sam,” Bucky spits, hating himself so vehemently it’s hard to breathe. “This fucking—all of—nothing like this would’ve ever happened to him if it weren’t for me. He wasn’t getting fucking assaulted before. He should hate me.”

“Bucky…” Sam begins, wincing.

“If anyone should fucking hate me, it’s you,” Bucky blurts out. “I came back into your best friend’s life and all of this shit happened to him.”

Sam is quiet for a minute. “Steve’s not the only one I love and care about,” he says, and gives Bucky a small smile. “And—and Bucky. That’s not true. You came into Steve’s life and made him happy again.”

Bucky swallows. “Sorry for yelling at you,” he whispers, and gives him as much of a smile as he can manage.

Sam huffs out a laugh. “Don’t worry about it.” He pauses. “He’d do anything for you, Buck. Whenever I’m with him, it’s all he talks about. It’s a little bit annoying. He’s never—he’d never, like, blame you or resent you for anything that happens. And he shouldn’t, ‘cause you didn’t do anything.”

Bucky nods and gulps, reaching absently to scratch Penny. “Thanks, Sam,” he whispers. Sam squeezes his shoulder again, and silence settles over them.

***

Steve wakes up in layers, someone peeling sleep off of him little by little, consciousness returning in pieces. His head feels as though someone has reached into his skull and wrung his brain out like a washcloth. He opens his eyes and his vision shudders as it calibrates itself, first so bright he has to shut them again, then misty, choked grey. He tries to remember where he is and why this would be the case, and it takes him longer than it should. He knows this isn’t right but he doesn’t remember why. His body feels heavier than it should, as though his bones have been filled with cement. _Bucky_ , he thinks, he wants Bucky.

Then, in ragged pieces: a dark street, a low, hissed threat, a figure stepping in, shoulders thrown back for a fight, Bucky’s hands too tight around his arm.

“Bucky,” he gasps, and _Christ,_ something hurts, probably because he jerked his body up as far as he could until hideous, almost unreal pain rushed back in, but it doesn’t matter, because he had been with Bucky and then Rumlow had been there and now he is here and he doesn’t know where they are—

“Hey,” someone says, voice soft, like they’re talking to a child, “Steve, Steve, you’re okay.” The room oscillates between unbearably bright light and soft, shapeless figures, but the voice stills him a little. “It’s okay, baby, it’s me, I’m right here.” He blinks six or seven times. “Lie back, baby.”

“Bucky,” Steve says again, brain slow, suspended in something thick and unmoving.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, still so gentle, “hey, baby. I’m here, I’m okay.” Steve blinks and shakes his head, sending something heavy and metallic clattering between his ears. “Just take a breath, Steve, and lean back, alright? We’re in the hospital.” His voice catches. The room is starting to come into focus again, light softening into something not quite so harsh, Bucky’s outline beginning to fill itself in and return to one solid figure instead of two wavering, ghostly silhouettes. Steve screws his eyes shut and open and becomes aware of someone else in the room.

“Hey, Steve,” Sam says. “You scared the shit out of us, asshole.”

He tries to think of something clever to say back, but his head swells with shrieking machinery and he winces. Bucky lays a hand on the back of his head and says, again, “Lie back, Steve, careful.”

He does, he thinks. The pain eases a fraction.

“What the fuck,” Steve croaks out. Abruptly, vividly, he thinks about Rumlow sneering _I’d even be willing to share, if you like. You got two good holes, right James?_ and violence shudders through him. “He—we—” He blinks hard. Bucky slumps into a chair and inches in as close as he can.

They both look stricken. “You know—” Sam starts, “You know who we are, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He grimaces against the light. Sam, noticing, tugs the blinds down.

“What year is it?” Bucky asks him, a hint of panic in his voice.

“2013,” Steve says, shaking his head, then regretting it. “We, um—what happened?”

“You don’t remember?” Bucky says quietly.

Steve takes a breath. “Rumlow,” he grits out, “did he fucking—” Agitation briefly sends a wave of paint through his head. Bucky nods, very pale. “He—oh, god.”

“Carol’s going after him,” Bucky tells Steve. Steve doesn’t miss the tremor in his voice.

“Was he—did someone else—were there other people there?”

Bucky nods, mouth twitching into a pained line. “Jack Rollins,” he whispers. “They, um. Followed us, I guess. And—and—” He breaks off. Sam squeezes his shoulder.

“Fuck,” Steve says hoarsely. “I—um—Jesus, Buck, are you alright?” He tries to sit up again, frantic, and pain crests over his head and he winces.

Bucky gives him an incredulous look. “Am _I_ fucking alright?”

Sam says something about finding a nurse and vanishes. Almost instantly, Bucky begins to cry, body shivering. Steve reaches up to cup his face.

“It’s okay, love,” he says, voice hoarse, “everything’s gonna be okay, baby. I promise.” He knows the moment he says it that he can’t guarentee a fucking thing, but seeing Bucky cry twists the already agonizing knife in his gut.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers, and chokes out a wrecked laugh. “You—you’re fucking here, you shouldn’t—you shouldn’t be worried about my fucking feelings—”

“It was scary, Buck,” Steve interrupts, “of course I’m gonna worry about you.”

Bucky swallows hard. “I’m okay,” he whispers, and lifts Steve’s hand to his lips and kisses. “I just—I thought—I didn’t know if you were gonna—gonna be okay—” His voice cracks again, and he leans over Steve, fingers careful against his face. “This is so fucked up, Steve. How many times are you gonna get hurt ‘cause of me?”

“I’ve gotten the shit kicked out of me for way less important things than you,” Steve says, trying for a joke. Bucky doesn’t laugh. “Baby,” Steve says, voice hoarse. “This isn’t your fault. I promise.” Tears pour down Bucky’s cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpers, “I’m just—I’m so, so sorry, and—and I’m sorry that right now, you’re fucking… comforting me when I should be comforting you and I’m just—”

“No, Buck,” Steve says, swallowing. “Baby, this guy who—who did these things to you, showing up now—of course you should—of course I’m gonna be here for you. It’s fucking scary.”

Bucky gulps and blinks, then reaches to thumb over Steve’s cheek. “Thank you,” he whispers. “You, um—no one deserves someone to protect them as much as you protect me.”

“You deserve it,” Steve whispers. “And Buck, you stopped them,” Steve takes his hand. “We’re gonna—we’re gonna be alright, Buck. Everything’s okay.” He swallows and lifts his arm a little. “C’mere.”

Bucky laughs, breathless and caught. “You sure?”

Steve nods.

Bucky lays on his chest, body trembling against him. He’s careful with his movements, not putting too much pressure on anywhere Steve may have been hurt. Steve wraps an arm around him and kisses his hair. He closes his eyes against the horror of the idea that he might have left Bucky alone without anyone to hold him through the night, to rub his back through nightmares.

He needs Bucky, needs him so much that when he delves into the unspeakable what-ifs— _what if I hadn’t taken that exhibit, what if I hadn’t walked home that night, what if that guy hadn’t tried to mug me_ —it sometimes traps the breath in his lungs, the awfulness of it. And Bucky needs him. Not in the sense that he literally couldn’t survive without Steve, but he isn’t stupid, he understands the nature of their relationship, the balanced dependency, the things that they provide one another that neither of them can lose. Bucky is so strong, so unimaginably brave, and so delicate. Both things can be true. He has weathered so much that Steve wants to wrap him in tenderness for the rest of their lives, to take care of him and protect him and soothe him, and the thought that Bucky might have had to be without that makes Steve’s head ache. He knows his role in Bucky’s recovery is permanent and important, just as Bucky’s role in his is, and he can’t bear the thought of that changing. Even in a near death experience, Bucky will always be his top priority. His head feels like it has been split down the middle with a butter knife then stuffed crudely back to one piece, and his body is impossibly stiff and sore, but he would still do it again, a thousand times, if the alternative was Bucky suffering.

He doesn’t know quite how to think about their relationship, sometimes. It transcends what most people imagine couples are. They are lovers and best friends, they’re soulmates, they’re partners in every sense of the word. He has loved Bucky since before he knew him, since before either of them were alive. He loved him when he was five years old with scraped knees in a sandbox and twenty years old flinching in an alleyway and he loves him right now, pressed against him in a hospital bed, so much he wonders how it doesn’t overtake him. The solidness of his love for Bucky is so vivid and constant that he sometimes thinks of it as an organ, as necessary to his survival as his heart and lungs. Their relationship is singular in its intensity, so uncomparable to other lovers and childhood friends and partners. 

“Can I do anything for you?” Bucky whispers, fitting their hands against one another’s. Steve squeezes.

“Talk to me,” Steve tells him, kissing his forehead.

“Talk to you?”

“Yeah. About anything you want. Just wanna hear your voice.” He pauses. “Will you read? Something you wrote.”

Bucky chokes out a laugh. “My phone died.”

Steve hums in acknowledgement. “Then just tell me anything.”

Bucky takes a breath, clutching tighter at Steve’s shirt. “I told the nurses we were engaged.”

Steve laughs, then winces. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, “I was scared they wouldn’t let me in if we weren’t, like, technically family.”

Steve kisses his hair. “Alright, fiance. Tell me a story, then.”

“Seriously?”

“You asked if I needed anything. Tell me a story.”

Bucky laughs, not really finding it funny. “Um,” he says, “once, at the beginning of the universe, there was space dust. And it was before there were souls or people or organisms, so all the things in the world that would become important things, it all just started out as these particles of not even stars yet. And—and then, as things started to evolve, so did this, um, stuff, that was just waiting to become the important things. And, uh, two little specks of dust just stuck together for all of time. And eventually, they’d be a little boy in Brooklyn who got into too many fights and liked to paint, and a little boy who was more careful than the other one but just—just would have followed him anywhere. But, um, before that, I think—I think the same pieces that went into those little boys had to stay intertwined for all of history. Like, maybe they lived in the forties together and one got drafted and the other enlisted to stay with him, or maybe a hundred years from now they’ll be living in some gorgeous city on another planet or something, but, um, I think when the universe made everything, it made them too closely to ever split up. Even if they did fall apart, they’d stumble back together, or else I think maybe the whole universe would start to unwind.” He pauses. Love overflows Steve, bursts in him.

“Keep going.” He mumbles. He can feel sleep pulling him under again. He finds himself hoping Sam doesn’t get the nurse yet.

“Really?”

“Yeah. This is the best story I’ve ever heard.”

“I don’t know how it ends,” Bucky says quietly.

“Happily,” Steve says, and kisses his head. “Keep going.”

And he does.

***

The doctor comes in later, when they’ve both fallen asleep and Sam and Wanda and Scott have briefly left for food. Bucky wakes up first, lifting his head off of Steve’s chest and blinking, then blushing, but she smiles and then says quietly, “If he’s resting I can come back—”

But then Steve stirs and grimaces and opens his eyes, and she raises her eyebrows.

“Babe?” Bucky says gently. “You alright?”

He nods and squeezes Bucky’s arm. 

“How are you feeling, Mr. Rogers?” she asks him.

“Um,” Steve says, “okay, all things considered?”

“No trouble remembering things?” He shakes his head. 

“Well,” she says, “the good news is you’re going to be fine. We’re gonna keep you overnight and run a few more tests and give you some pain medication, but you can go home tomorrow. You’re going to have to take it easy, for the next few weeks. No strenuous exercise, no driving, no drinking, no sex.” She glances between them. Steve nods; Bucky lowers his gaze for a fraction of a second. “Take it easy with things that require a lot of concentration, like reading or tv. If you start to feel symptoms—so headaches, irritability, trouble remembering things—worse, take a step back.”

“What about his work?” Bucky says anxiously. “He’s a painter.”

She thinks about this one. “Take it a step at a time. I wouldn’t do anything for a week, but then you can start to gradually get back into things. Just don’t push yourself too hard. If you are feeling symptoms, don’t try to push through them. You’re gonna need rest.”

Steve nods. The thought of a recovery period winding out in front of him like this makes him feel suddenly exhausted. Bucky squeezes his hand. She says they have a few more tests to run, that she’ll give him a list of everything he needs to know and write a prescription, do they have anymore questions, and Steve gives a vague shake of his head. When she leaves, Bucky thumbs gently over the cuts on his face, lip quivering.

“It’s okay, baby,” Steve tells him. Comforting Bucky is the one thing he feels he can adequately do right now, and it grounds him. Bucky swallows.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. Steve shakes his head and, with some effort, turns his chin to kiss Bucky’s hand.

“She said it’s gonna be fine,” he says. “It’s not your fault, love.” Bucky nods, eyes down. He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, then changes his mind. “What?” Steve presses.

Bucky shakes his head, eyelashes fluttering panickedly. “I love you,” he mumbles, “I—I love you so, so, so much, I—I thought you might—and I—and I just never want you to be hurt, ever.” He rests his forehead against their clasped hands; a tear slips between their fingers.

“Now you know how I feel all the time,” Steve replies, with an exhausted smile. Bucky chokes out a laugh. “I’m okay,” Steve promises him, “I’m right here.”

“I know,” Bucky manages, voice caught. “I know.”

***

Carol comes an indeterminate amount of time later. Hospital rooms defy linear time, Bucky thinks. They may have been here for thirty minutes or two days but when she arrives, they’re lying quietly together again, half-wake.

“Hey,” Carol says, propping herself in the doorframe. She looks exhausted. “How are you doing, Steve?”

“Great,” he says, and coughs a little. Bucky shifts out of his way and into a chair beside the bed, reaching over to hold his hand. Steve sits up slowly, Bucky’s hand light on his back.

Carol smiles weakly. “I’m so sorry, kid,” she tells him. “You guys know, whatever me and Maria can do for you, consider it done, okay?”

“Thanks, Carol,” Steve says.

She reaches in and squeezes his hand lightly. Under her eyes, the skin is gray and thin, exhaustion obvious. She presses her palms into her eyes and sighs.

“So I’ve got some fucking news,” she says, her tone even.

“You found him,” Bucky says, voice small. He thinks about another trial and his vision goes momentarily hazy.

She swallows. “Yeah,” she says, “but he’s not gonna be bothering you anytime soon. He’s dead.”

They both jerk up, alarmed. Steve winces, and, when Bucky turns to make sure he’s okay, gives him a nod and squeezes his hand.

“What?” Bucky says, voice caught. Against the window, droplets of water have begun to run down the glass, frosty gray light making the room feel still and untouched. Carol nods, swallows, and starts to explain.

***

What happened was this.

Sharon Carter was home alone. She had, for the last few months, been living in a brownstone in Tribeca with her best friend from college, Elena, who promised her again and again that she could stay as long as she wanted to. The same friend who, when she started dating a thirty-year old cop at nineteen, had known what was happening long before Sharon ever had and tried, for years, to get her to see, until Brock let Sharon see her less and less. The same friend who, after two years of barely seeing her, Sharon had called when she found out she was pregnant, who she had let into her and Brock’s studio apartment and not said anything to as she took her in, black eye and bruised arms and battered, defeated posture, and then said, in tears, “ _Sharon_ ,” who let her break down in her arms and then said, “You need to leave him today,” and then, when it hadn’t worked out like that, had held her hand while she talked to detectives after a neighbor had called the cops after hearing her screaming. 

Sharon had gone to work that day. She’s an English teacher at a public school in Manhattan, where she is adored. She had completed her lessons on The Handmaid’s Tale, had coffee with a colleague, relieved the sitter watching the baby, put him to bed, and cooked herself dinner. She was planning on collapsing on the couch and watching Breaking Bad while she graded mediocre papers. 

She was doing dishes when he came in. She heard something at the backdoor, but hadn’t immediately panicked; neighbors have been complaining about raccoons,and getting access to her backyard would involve jumping three fences. Then she heard the door swing open, followed by heavy footsteps too fast for her to do anything, and she spun around.

“Hey, honey,” Brock said. She didn’t say anything. He looked terrifying, eyes bloodshot and crazed, face slightly swollen, and then she saw his hands were caked dark red and she stepped back, almost convulsing with fear. 

“You need to leave,” Sharon gritted out. “I—I have a no contact order—” He laughed. His face, she said later, was twitching, eyes screwing shut and open again like a rabid animal. She thought about screaming, but she didn’t.

“You look thinner,” Brock told her. He hadn’t stopped walking, and she brushed against the kitchen counter and startled. In the sink behind her was a steak knife that she had used earlier to cook salmon, and she began, slowly, to reach for it. He was getting closer, and her whole body hitched with fear. The baby was upstairs asleep. Elena was out for the night. “You look better like this.”

“Brock,” Sharon whispered, voice corkscrewing towards hysteria. His mouth twisted up. “What did you do?”

He cast his gaze down to the blood on his hands, then back at her. “You and Barnes shouldn’t have talked to the cops, sweetheart,” he answered. Sharon made a punched out, terrified noise.

Against the countertop in the middle of the room, her phone began to vibrate. Brock was closer to it, so he looked over and then huffed out a laugh. He left it there, and she didn’t try to get to it. Sharon’s hand is thrust behind her in the sink, feeling for the knife and trembling. The other one was white knuckling the edge of the counter.

Upstairs, the baby began to cry. Brock stopped advancing on her and turned his shoulders towards the staircase, and before Sharon could work out what he was going to do he smirked at her and then went for the staircase and then she did scream.

“ _Brock, no, no—_ ” She bolted after him, knife forgotten in the sink, but he was faster and she was shaking like a ragdoll and he got there first and when she hurtled into the bedroom, he was there, holding the baby, who was crying harder. Sharon was so scared, she said, that she felt her body shut down.

“Brock,” she managed, “just—just—just give him t-to me and we c-can talk, okay, whatever you want, just—”

Brock snorted. “What’s his name?” 

“James,” Sharon whispered. Brock burst out laughing.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he sneered. “You two starting a fucking support group? Pathetic little sluts who don’t know how to keep their mouths shut?”

“Brock,” Sharon said, feeling very faint, “please, please give him to me.”

“He’s my fucking kid, you know,” Brock snarled. The baby, in his arms, was limp and unsupported, his head twisted to the side, and the crying turned to shrieking.

“I know,” Sharon managed. “Brock, just put him—put him—put him down, okay? Please. We can figure this out.” The baby’s wailing, by now, had swelled to hysterical and scared.

“Jesus!” Brock snarled, and shook him. “Can’t you get him to shut up?”

“He’ll stop if you give him to me,” Sharon whispered. “Brock. Please. I’ll do—anything you want. Just please, please don’t hurt him.” Her voice was high and terrified.

Brock glowered at her for a minute. “Take him,” he snapped. “You fucking try anything, I’ll kill both of you, understand?”

Sharon nodded, choking back tears, and stepped in, movements staggered and short. Brock thrust the baby towards her, and she swept him in and cradled him, choked with relief and terror, his face turned into her shoulder so he wasn’t looking at his father who would never be his father. He quieted down, after a few minutes, breath slowing to quiet, oblivious inhales. Brock watched her, unmoving.

“Downstairs,” he snapped. Sharon closed her eyes and leaned over the crib, and Brock, his movements brutal, grabbed her wrist and snarled, “He comes, too.”

She shook her head, small and desperate. “Please,” she said. “Please.” She was not above begging to protect him.

He squeezed her wrist tighter; it bruised, the next day. Slowly, anguishedly, she lifted him and and cradled him against her. She stared at Brock; he snapped, “Go down.”

So she did. In the kitchen, harsh light cut their figures into shadows. She stood there, across from him, baby clutched to her chest. Brock wasn’t just enraged, she realized, he was scared. He dragged the curtains shut and turned on them. She startled back.

“This is your fault,” he snarled, bloodthristy. She winced. “All I ever did was love you, you fucking bitch,” he growled. “I was the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“I know,” Sharon whispered. “Brock, I know, I’m—I’m so sorry—”

“Why would you fucking do that to me?” Brock shouted. The words slurred. “My life is fucking over now! You and a fucking whore, Sharon! He’s fucking nothing! He’s a hooker!”

“Brock,” she said, “just—just calm down—”

He turned on her, body built into a threat again; she pulled the baby closer to her and stepped back. He was advancing on them.

“Brock,” she whispered, “stop. I’ll do anything, just—just stop.”

He had backed her against the counter by then; he was close enough to touch her. “You already ruined my fucking life,” he snarled, “might as well get something out of it.” His voice had dropped to soft and dangerous; she shrunk back.

The banging on the door shook them both into momentary stillness. He had his hand on her wrist; he dug his nails into her skin in warning. She bit back the urge to scream. The baby wailed into her shoulder.

“Ms. Carter?” Fury called. “You in there?” Sharon gasped, a small, choked noise of desperation. Brock’s eyes went wilder, graying, irritated skin flushing. He knew then that he had lost.

“Tell them you’re fine,” Brock hissed, “or I’ll snap his neck, okay, _sweetie_?” His voice was strange and shaky, but he was not backing down.

“I’m here,” Sharon managed, her voice too high. “I’m fine.”

A beat. The baby began to cry harder. Brock, for a moment, looked more panicked then Sharon.

“Mind if we come in?” Fury said, voice careful. He knew immediately.

Brock shook his head at her. She closed her eyes and choked out, “Please don’t.”

She said she watched him give up. He knew there was no way out of this. She saw it, his eyes growing heavier and the creases in his face redefining themselves, and then he roared “You fucking come in here and I’ll cut her throat!”

They were saying something, their voices practiced and calm, talking down a rabid animal, but Sharon didn’t register what. Every one of her senses had become a shrieking cascade of blood, terror that sat sizzling hot on her skin, its solidness such that she later couldn’t believe she managed to stay conscious.

He went for the knife block, jerking back enough from her that she could grasp behind her, one handed, into the sink. She closed her fist around the knife, other hand resting on her baby’s back, suddenly heavier than he has ever been in her arms, and before Brock could pull one out she thrust it out in front of her, still slick with oil from dinner, shaking. The room shuddered, its contents hazy. He staggered back a step, momentarily surprised, then thrust his weight forward and grinned.

“You gonna stab me, Sharon?” Brock sneered. “Then do it, bitch.” She kept the knife held out, hand shaking.

Sharon said it happened faster than she could work out what was happening. She said the moment itself lacked any existence; there was before, and there was after. He lunged for her, teeth bared with the viciousness and desperation of an animal, and she swung. It was a hysterical, graceless motion that took her whole arm. Then she dropped it.

It happened slower than she expected, and there was more blood. A great skirt of red burst from his neck, and she watched his expression change as he realized what was happening, and he had stopped, his whole body stunted, and then he collapsed like a rag doll. He screamed. The noise parasited its way into her brain and settled there, ammunition for every nightmare she will ever have.

Fury and Carol hurtled in, guns raised and ready, and then, upon seeing it, stopped cold. It is rare to truly astonish detectives as experienced as them, but this had done it.

“Sharon,” Carol said, a little breathless, “are you alright?”

She nodded, then said, “Oh, god, Elena’s kitchen floor.” Carol and Nick exchanged brief glances.

“Sharon,” Carol said again. “Did he hurt you? Did he hurt your son?”

Sharon shook her head. There was some blood on the side of her hand; she reached behind her and turned on the cold water and rinsed it off. James was still crying. She rocked him for a moment, then turned to Carol.

“Can you hold him?” Sharon, body quivering like a plucked elastic strip, handed the baby to Carol. Carol blinked and took him from her. Sharon swayed a moment on her feet, then turned and got sick. Paramedics began to boulder in and it was over, he was gone as permanently and violently as he could be, and Sharon turned back to Carol and pulled James into her arms and rocked him.

“Is she okay?” Bucky whispers, when Carol is done telling them. He feels as though everything in him has been drained, the good and bad. He feels as though the atoms making him up have all shut off, and he is a hum of space that has lost the ability to react. Steve, next to him, is blinking, too shocked to say a word.

“She’s not hurt,” Carol says. “She’s pretty shaken up, obviously. The baby’s okay. She won’t get charged with anything, though. Self defense.”

Bucky swallows. Somewhere inside him, relief breaks open, poisoned and corrupted by the awfulness of all of this but undeniable. He doesn’t know what kind of person that makes him.

“Jesus Christ,” Steve says finally. His voice is dull and tinny. “Well. Fucking good.” Bucky turns to him, and Steve’s eyes are hard as diamond.

Carol snorts. “I’m sure not crying over him.” She scrubs a hand down her face. “I gotta go wrap some stuff up. I just… I wanted to tell you.” She squeezes each of their hands. “I’ll call later, okay?” They nod, bewildered. “Love you guys,” she says, and leaves. 

It’s begun pouring outside. Bucky stares at the rain, coming down so hard it’s barely distinguishable from air, until he hears Steve say his name. He turns. Steve is looking at him, eyes huge and worried, little creases between his brow.

“You okay, love?” Steve says softly.

Bucky nods and lays against his chest again. His heart feels like it’s turning over and over, frantic as the downpour outside.

“Wanna talk about it?” Steve whispers.

“Not—not yet,” Bucky replies, voice small. “Is that—Is that okay?”

“Always,” Steve tells him, voice thick. Bucky closes his eyes and finds Steve’s hand and squeezes. Something that is almost relief but too violent, too painful to get there completely settles over them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)) cafelesbian on tumblr
> 
> i posted not one but TWO little oneshot things last week......read and let me know ur thoughts if u likeeeee
> 
> if u leave a comment i will probably genuinely tear up like i did at some messages i got recently!! wowowow love u all


	22. twenty-two

The kettle crescendos from a hiss to a whine, and Bucky turns the dial down. He pours the water over into the mug, where it is filtered through the dripper and into the mug. Outside, upstate fog dots the window in droplets, running down the glass in crescents and trembling lines. Bucky watches a small clear drop charge down the windowpane. The toast finishes, and he pulls it out and lays it carefully beside the eggs, poached to quivering, bright white perfection. He tucks his half-finished coffee into the crook of his elbow so he can hold the plate and Steve’s mug, and heads upstairs.

Steve is awake, but barely. He’s sitting up, rubbing his eyes. Penny waits for Bucky to sit on the bed, and then jumps up between them.

“Hi,” Bucky says, leaning in for a kiss. Steve smiles into it. He hasn’t shaved in a few days, and scruff rubs against Bucky’s jaw, not comfortable but not unwelcome. “Made you breakfast.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Steve tells him, grinning.

“Shut up,” Bucky replies, tucking himself back under the covers and next to Steve. Steve laughs and kisses his temple. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m good,” Steve says, threading his fingers through Bucky’s hair, “I’m okay, Buck.”

“I know,” Bucky sighs, and touches his chin.

“This looks amazing,” Steve tells him, and Bucky smiles. Under Steve’s eyes, the skin has almost faded back to normal, but there’s still a greenish grayish sheen that makes Bucky wince. Bucky lays his head on Steve’s shoulder.

***

It has been eight days, and Bucky and Steve have gone upstate again. It was Bucky’s idea. Steve was restless, agitation from being mostly confined to resting intensified by the head injury, and Bucky looked at him the fifth night and asked if he wanted to leave the city and he said yes. They rented their same house from last time and took a train and fell asleep against one another and made it there, and have spent the last three days warm and settled, curled up together on the couch as rain comes down against the window or binge watching tv until they both fall asleep or getting too invested in a game of Monopoly or Scrabble. It is a nice few days. It makes it possible to hover in this strange, half-formed bubble of fallout after everything.

“I feel relieved,” Bucky says quietly one night. They are pressed up against each other on the couch, Bucky small and warm against Steve’s chest and in between his legs, hands held, fitted as perfectly as sea and weathered rock.

They’ve barely talked about it. There has been so much, leaving the hospital and speaking to their therapists and friends and Bucky forcing Steve to be overly cautious with anything that could possibly prolong the head injury that they haven’t had the time or the energy to sit down and discuss the fact that after months of being enlisted to stalk and terrorize them, after brutalizing Bucky and Sharon and trying to kill both of them respectively, Rumlow is dead. When they got home, they went to bed and slept for sixteen hours, and since then they have been hovering in a strange, hazy area between relief and terror.

Everything is, for the most part, alright. Steve is staying away from physical activity and intense concentration and, as much as he can, stress. Being here is nice, being with Bucky is even nicer. They are getting texts every ten minutes from a different friend making sure they’re alright and offering them anything they need, and they are safe. Steve kisses his temple.

“That’s like, the most normal and legitimate reaction in the world,” Steve says quietly. “I’m relieved, too.”

Bucky swallows hard, and traces his fingers over Steve’s knuckles. “Pierce warned me,” Bucky says, very quietly. “He said if I ever told anyone he would kill me. He said, um. That he could shoot me in his apartment and nobody would even care and he’d have people to clean it up and never say a word.” He flinches at nothing. “Do you, um. Do you think I should’ve kept quiet? So we could have just, um. I mean, I don’t know what we’d be doing right now. But still.”

Steve winces. “God, Buck, no. He fucking threatened you, and you were still brave enough to stand up to him.” He pauses. “What he does, what anyone does, it’s never your fault, okay?”

“It’s not fair,” Bucky whispers, “that he’s in jail, he’s supposed to be gone, and he’s been able to do this.”

“I know,” Steve answers. “But he won’t be able to go on like that, okay? He just won’t.” He says it with confidence he doesn’t entirely have, although he hopes he’s right.

Bucky thumbs over Steve’s knuckles. “Are you scared?” he asks, voice very soft.

Steve kisses his ear. “No,” he says, “I mean, um. Sometimes, obviously. I just… I don’t… I think things are gonna be okay for us. I really, really believe it.”

Bucky leans his head back so when he blinks, his eyelashes tickle Steve’s neck. “When we were little kids, I just… I thought you were the bravest person ever. The first time we did Halloween together, we went through that stupid haunted walk in the park, and I thought I was gonna have a heart attack, and you were just telling me you weren’t scared, it was all fake, and I’ve, like, never idolized anyone like I idolized you back then.” 

“I just wanted to seem cool to you,” Steve says, “those fake werewolves scared the shit out of me.”

Bucky laughs. “Yeah, well. Anyway, I’m back to thinking you’re the bravest person ever.”

Steve murmurs, “I’m nowhere near as brave as you.”

Bucky snorts. “You got the shit kicked out of you, Steve. If that’d been me I wouldn’t have let you touch me for another six months.”

Steve sighs. “It’s not the same, baby. You know it’s not.”

“Still,” Bucky whispers. “I feel like I should, um, tell you. If you’re scared, it’s okay. Traumatized isn’t only my look. You shouldn’t feel like you have to be the strong one all the time.” He squeezes Steve’s hand.

Steve squeezes back. “It’s not that it doesn’t shake me,” he says softly. “It does. It’s just… in the context of, um, everything that’s happened to us in the last year, to have gotten beat up by him… it was terrifying. And awful. But I just… I don’t know. I think—I think knowing he’s gone, and that we’re safe is—is helping, you know?” That’s what he had said to Henry when he’d asked him almost the same thing. What happened was so awful, but it feels, somehow, like a fluke, like a terrible thing that has happened to them but will now never happen again. Maybe Steve’s being naive, or maybe this is the end and the relief that comes with that is bigger than the ways it’s hurting him. He’s just felt so, so relieved since Carol told them Rumlow was dead that it even made the head injury seem like something small and manageable.

It’s not the same for Bucky, he knows, as these things never will be for them. Maybe that’s part of it, too, the knowledge that what this was for Bucky cut so much deeper and sharper than it ever could for him simply because of the history.

Bucky swallows and buries himself closer into Steve’s side. “I’m still scared,” he says softly.

“That’s okay,” Steve tells him, and kisses his hair.

***

They go home ten days before Christmas. It seemed right to go back, where the people who love them are, where their home that is tentatively safe is waiting, warm and undisturbed. Carol and Maria invite them over for dinner the night they get back, and they go, and are wrapped in frantic, bracing hugs and asked if they’re alright three, four, five times and given delicious food. It reminds Steve of the number sitting ignored in his contacts, but he forces that aside for now. Everything else has pushed it to a small, suddenly almost meaningless space in his brain.

After they eat bowls of ice cream and Maria sweeps Monica up to bed, Carol sits down in front of them and drums the table nervously. “So,” she says, “Rollins filled us in on almost everything that happened.”

Bucky bites his lip. She had told them, a fraction of a lifetime ago in the hospital, that they’d arrested him, that he had been in a car by Sharon’s house waiting for Brock, but he and Steve had been so shell-shocked that they had barely registered it. He leans instinctually against Steve, and Steve rubs his shoulder.

(Bucky imagines again what it would have meant to lose him, and he squeezes Steve’s hand to remind himself that he didn’t.)

“What’d he say?” Steve asks her.

Carol sighs. “You wanna watch his interview?”

They both turn to Bucky. He swallows and nods.

Carol leaves for a moment to get her laptop, and Bucky begins bouncing his leg. Steve turns to him, and his lips brush Bucky’s forehead.

“You sure?” he says softly. Bucky nods and buries his face momentarily in Steve’s tee. He wants to know, wants to untangle these terrible wires in his brain. “I love you,” Steve tells him.

Bucky looks up. “I love you.”

Carol comes back in and settles across from them. “Okay,” she says, and spins her glass of wine. “He says some pretty awful stuff in there, just—just so you know.”

Bucky nods. He figured as much.

“Fury arrested him,” Carol tells them, “I did the questioning.” She looks down and drags her finger in a circle over the table. “Prosecutor says he’s gonna plead guilty to for ten years. Criminal facilitation in the second degree.” Her voice is dull.

“That’s not much,” Steve says sharply.

She looks up. “I know. A lot of what he did can’t be proved.” She rubs her nose. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Bucky tells her.

“I’m still sorry,” she says. She looks it. “All we’ve got is what he confessed to here.” Her mouth pulls into a thin, uncomfortable line. “It’s so fucked up.”

“Can we watch?” Bucky whispers. Carol sighs and nods, then turns the laptop towards them and hits play.

He is sitting alone, shackled to a table, scowling in oversaturated black and white. Bucky swallows. The door swings open, and Carol strides in, sitting down and cocking her head.

“Jack, right?” she says. He doesn’t say anything. “Hi. I’m Carol. Sorry for the wait, I don’t think this’ll take long.”

“I’m allowed to have a lawyer,” Rollins spits. He has clearly been planning on saying that since they brought him in.

“I know,” Carol says, her voice higher and breathier than usual, very warm. “The second you want me to call one, let me know, yeah? Believe me, the week I’m having, this case stretching on endlessly, I want to process this and get you out of here, okay?”

He stares at her. “I know what you’re fucking doing.”

Carol makes a show of glancing over her shoulder, then leans in. “Look, Jack. I’m sick of this case, alright? I know what happened. Obviously, Brock Rumlow was the one behind the stalking and whatnot. I don’t know why this unit treats this ex-hooker like the pinnacle of a sexual assault victims, and I don’t need to focus on Barnes or Rogers anymore, so if we could wrap this up right now and I could not have to focus my resources that could be better used on this waste of time anymore, that would be great.”

In real time, Carol winces. “Sorry, Buck,” she says, and sounds guilty. “I wanted to get this piece of shit talking.” Bucky gives her a forgiving squeeze on the arm. Steve pulls him a little closer.

Sure enough, in the video, Rollins sneers. “Christ, he’s even got the fucking sex crimes detectives against him, huh?”

Carol glances over her shoulder again. “God, fuck—don’t, um, tell anyone here that I said that, okay? I shouldn’t be talking about a victim like that—”

“He’s not a victim,” Rollins cuts in, voice hard. “He’s a whore. I’ve had him in bed, and I guaran-fucking-tee you that whatever he says Brock or Pierce or me or whoever did to him is a load of bullshit.”

As if the words are close, Steve draws his arms tighter around Bucky and kisses his cheek. Bucky closes his eyes for a moment and leans into it.

Carol, in the video, lifts her head a bit. “So it was Brock who introduced you to James Barnes?”

Rollins scoffs. “Introduced is a stretch. He told me about him and where to find him.”

“What was your relationship with him like? With Barnes.”

Another scoff, harsher. “It wasn’t a relationship. I fucked him a couple times.” Bucky closes his eyes, and Steve bites his lip. Carol pauses the video.

“I’m sorry, we don’t have to—”

“Keep going,” Bucky says. She watches him, then nods and unpauses.

Rollins rolls his head back, like he can’t believe he’s being made to answer these obvious questions. “I’m not—neither of us are gay, or anything,” Rollins says. “He was an easy fuck. He was fun.”

“How so?” Carol says, voice even.

“He let you do what you wanted. He never fought back.” Then, hastily. “Brock said. I didn’t rape him. Neither did Brock.”

Carol leans in, just a fraction. “What makes you say that?”

Rollins leans back again, guarded. “I’m not saying anything about that to you.”

Carol runs a hand through her hair. “Fine. I want to get out of here, though, and the fastest way for me to do that is to send you off. I’m trying to help you.”

He watches her for a moment; she holds his gaze. “Please, Jack. I just wanna get this over with.”

“Sometimes,” Rollins says, considering this, “Brock would talk about stuff he did to him. And he said yes to it! But it could come off as assault.”

“How so?”

“I don’t—I don’t know. He talked about hitting him and him crying and shit.”

Bucky can feel Carol and Steve watching him. “It’s okay,” he whispers. Steve kisses his forehead.

Carol, in the video, purses her lips. “Tell me,” she says, “about Brock and Alexander Pierce.”

Rollins leans back a bit. “I was the one who told Brock to get in touch with Pierce last year,” he says. “I saw the news and recognized James. Figured if he could say something for the defense, they might be able to help him out.”

“And you were right,” Carol says, feigning being impressed. Rollins eases back, smirking a bit. “But that relationship carried on after the trial, too.” She’s not asking, but she tilts her head for a response. 

Rollins hesitates, and Carol sighs. “Jack,” she says, “we already know everything. You aren’t implicated here. Whatever you tell me now will just help you.”

So he starts talking. Most of it, they knew. Brock asked him to threaten Sharon out of testifying. Stern, the cop who had been at their house a few weeks prior accusing Steve of assault, had been Brock’s partner (gelatinous nausea rolls through Bucky at that knowledge) and he’d been the other man who came to her house. He was the one Brock talked to to try and get Steve arrested. Brock thought it was fun to fuck with them, Rollins said, but Pierce was obsessed with them. Bucky bites his lip and finds he tastes metal.

After nothing happened, after Steve wasn’t implicated or arrested, Rollins said Brock started to wonder what he was doing. “I think Brock was gonna lay low for a while, after—after the whole trying to get Rogers arrested thing didn’t pan out. I think he was starting to realize that, you know, he got released and he shouldn’t be rocking the boat and even if Alexander Pierce was angry at him, the guy’s in jail, you know? I mean, he probably sounded authoritative on the phone, ‘cause he knew how to run a business, but once you really think about it, he didn’t have anyone really helping him beyond Brock and maybe his old lawyer, right? So Brock might’ve backed off for a little.” He pauses. “But then Stern called him, and said he heard from a friend in sex crimes that Barnes and Sharon talked to the cops. And Brock freaked.”

“How?”

“He called me and was like, ‘you need to fucking come right now, we have to leave, they’re gonna get you, too.’ So I did, and we got a hotel room in the Bronx, and we were there for a few days.”

“Did you have a plan?”

Rollins grinds his palms against his face. “He had been talking to Pierce. Pierce was pissed at him, I mean, I heard them on the phone. I get why that guy yelling could freak him out. Anyway, Pierce basically said, ‘deal with them, and I’ll give you enough money to leave.’ I don’t know if he meant it or not, but that was the promise. Brock argued with him at first. It got ugly. Brock was really angry. He was basically like, ‘this is your fault, you got me into this,’ but eventually, I think he realized there was no way out. So he told Pierce he’d… handle James.”

“Was Brock on drugs?”

Rollins says, glancing down, “Yeah. Coke. Not mine.”

“Right,” Carol says, “so what happened that night, from your point of view?”

He leans forward, a shadow passing over his face. “He told Pierce he’d go… he’d kill James. And Pierce said when he was done, he’d help him. I really—I knew, at this point, uh. It wasn’t great. But he made up his mind. Brock did a few lines. He wasn’t—an addict, or anything, but we used to sometimes fuck around, but—but lately he’s been doing more.”

“So what was he gonna do?”

Rollins rubs his chin. “Kill James, kill Rogers, kill Sharon and her kid. He wasn’t thinking clearly, I don’t think. I also think he just figured, uh. If he’s going down anyway, might as well bring them down too.”

“How did you two find Sharon Carter?”

“He asked Stern to find out where she was living, and I guess he did.”

“How?”

“Followed her home from work.” He pauses. “When he—when he got the address, he said he was gonna go, um, ‘make her pay.’ And I tried to stop him, okay? I did.”

“I believe you,” Carol says. “What happened next?”

“Brock was—he was fuckin’ insane, Detective, he was losing it. He was, uh. He really wanted Sharon, I think. But Pierce was up his ass about James, and I think—I think he was angry about him, too, and so, uh. He wanted to get both of them. And Rogers. And anyone who was there, probably. I really did try to stop him.”

“From getting Sharon and Bucky,” Carol confirms.

“I guess so. He said, uh, ‘I’m gonna kill that fucking slut,’ and I didn’t know which one he was talking about.”

“But in the end, you drove him and helped him?”

“I didn’t—I wasn’t—look, he was gonna get a ride either way. I thought I could maybe talk him out of it.”

“Where did you drive him?”

“Park Slope, first. To Barnes.”

“What happened there?”

“C’mon. You know.”

“I need to hear it from you.”

He sighs. “Brock had me follow them for a bit. They left their place and went to a restaurant, and we waited for them. After they started walking home, Brock had me pull over and he got out and he told me to follow them, and he said a couple things to them, and then he started fighting Rogers.”

“What did you do?”

He grimaces. “I held back James.”

“Then what?”

He scowls darkly, and his body tenses. “James threw me off of him and pepper sprayed Brock and I got us out of there. I drove us a couple blocks away and parked and he threw some water into his eyes and took a little while to come back from that, and then he said we were going to Sharon’s. He said if he couldn’t get James, he’d get her.”

Carol stops the video there. The three of them sit there with it, the improbable awfulness of what they just listened to. Bucky closes his eyes and leans his head again on Steve’s shoulder, too tired to hold himself up.

“He talks about Sharon some more,” Carol summarizes grimly, “then I told him he just confessed to aiding and abetting attempted murder, and that Rumlow was dead. He thought I was lying.” She goes quiet again, studying them.

“What about Pierce?” Steve asks her.

She grimaces. “The problem,” she says, “is that it’s Pierce and his lawyers against Jack Rollins. All we have is his word on it. In terms of evidence, it’s barely anything.” She pauses. “I don’t know how much you two want to get involved. If it’s worth it for you to bring it against him, I will do everything I can to help you.”

***

“I can’t,” Bucky whispers to Steve that night.

They’re sitting across from one another in bed, and Steve asked him what he wanted to do. It’s the answer Steve expected, and he thinks it’s the right one. 

“Do you think that—that makes me a coward?”

Steve reaches up and thumbs his cheek. “Of course not,” he says, sure of it. “Why should you go through something like that again? Especially when—when he’s already in there.”

“I just—” Bucky swallows. “I don’t want to do it again. It took so much out of me the first time.”

“I know,” Steve says, “I know, baby. You don’t have to justify it.”

Bucky takes a deep breath and nods, slow and rhythmic. “Is that okay with you?”

Steve blinks, surprised. “Of course.”

“I just mean, um. All of this affected you, too. I don’t want to be the one who decides—”

“Bucky,” Steve says firmly, “this is what I’d decide, too. He can rot in there.”

Bucky nods, shoulders going slightly less tense. “What if he keeps trying?”

Steve shifts in closer, and Bucky wraps his arms around Steve’s middle. “Then that will be a different story, and whatever he would try to do, we’ll stop him. But I think—I think for now, it’s good to focus on us.”

Bucky nods. “Thank you,” he whispers.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. You just always say the right thing.”

Steve laughs, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “We’re good, baby. We’re gonna be so good.”

***

Three days later, Steve wakes up alone. Mostly still asleep, he reaches to pull Bucky close again and finds he isn’t there which gets him quickly and urgently up. Neither of them have been sleeping particularly well, but the last few nights have been especially hard, with Steve waking up to Bucky whimpering and shaking at his side and having to nudge him awake and then hold him in the dark and the quiet until he settled back into sleep again. It’s not a surprise. He expected the fallout at some point, and he supposes being home again and the video and the general exhaustion that comes with catastrophes being finally over is enough to shake him.

He’s always a little worried when he wakes up alone, though. Steve throws the covers off and gets downstairs, a faint tangerine light glowing in the kitchen. Bucky is there, much to his relief, standing over the counter, tension coiled tight in his back, doing something in a mixing bowl. Steve blinks.

“Buck?” His voice is so soft, but Bucky startles a little anyway, then winces.

“Um, hey,” he says. “You should—you should go back to bed—”

“Baby,” Steve says quietly, and walks to stand beside him. He’s got baking products laid out in front of him, flour powdering his shirt, and he’s mixing something with anxious hands. Steve watches him for a moment, concerned.

“What’s wrong?” Steve says, voice gentle. Bucky shakes his head too fast. “Buck.”

“Nothing,” Bucky whispers, his voice tight, “nothing, I’m fine, I’m okay—”

Steve bites his lip. “Usually, three am baking doesn’t scream ‘okay’ to me.” Bucky forces a laugh and doesn’t look up. “Nightmare?” Steve asks him, leaning down to kiss his shoulder. Bucky swallows.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says. His voice is small.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” Steve asks.

Bucky glances up. “I’ve woken you up the last three nights.”

“Buck,” Steve says, “you know you can always—”

Bucky shakes his head. “You’re s’posed to be resting.” Bucky’s breathing is short and panicky. He keeps stirring the batter; Steve reaches over and takes his hands. “Hey,” he says, “talk to me, baby.”

Bucky swallows, face twisting with grief. “It’s hard to explain,” he whispers.

“Try?” Steve asks. Bucky looks down and returns to whisking. Steve watches him. He finishes and begins to pour it into the tray.

“I, um.” Bucky swallows again. “I was—was just thinking.” His mouth twists down into a troubled little line. “Pierce is in jail,” Bucky says quietly. “Rumlow’s dead, Rollins is in jail. Everyone, um, else I—I’ll probably never see again, and—and—and if I do, um, we have everything we could need to—to be safe.” He swallows. Steve nods. “I just—I still feel like, um. I’m gonna be hurt by them.” A speck of batter sits on his chin, so Steve thumbs it off. Bucky gives him a small smile. “And, um, I’m, like, used to that, you know? I have, um, been scared of them a long time.” He makes a strange noise that should maybe be a laugh. “But, um. I was—I was thinking about the—the—the things Rollins said in that video. And I know she didn’t—I know she doesn’t believe it, but what Carol said.” He winces. “Um. People keep hurting me.” His voice is so, so quiet. “And I know I’m supposed to be, um, thinking that’s not my fault anymore, and I do sometimes. But, um. Sometimes it’s hard not to—to think that there’s, um, not something in me that’s supposed to be hurt. And that’s—that’s why it keeps happening. Even now, you know? When he’s in prison and I’m here and this should be fucking over.” Steve swallows. Bucky hasn’t looked at him in a while, and he avoids his gaze now, bending down and pulling the oven open to shove the muffins in. “Just, um. Yeah. I think maybe I’m poison, or something. Like—like maybe the thing, um, that most defines me is that people want to hurt me.” He finally looks up. He isn’t crying, which makes it almost worse, the matter-of-factness of it.

“Bucky,” Steve says softly, “Bucky, that’s not what you are.” Moonlight cuts softly across his face. Bucky looks down.

“Then what am I?” he whispers. 

Steve takes a breath. “Can I touch you?” he asks. Bucky nods. Steve cups his face and looks at him, at this person who he has loved so entirely and vividly for his whole life who is telling him he thinks he is something for people to hurt. He swallows.

“Sit?” Steve says. Bucky looks up, then shrugs, and they settle on the floor. Bucky curls into his side and lays his head on Steve’s shoulder. He smells like sugar and flour. Steve inhales him, the unimaginable reality of him.

“You’re the love of my life,” Steve says, his voice so soft. “You’re my best friend. You’re the most beautiful writer. You’re brilliant, and you’re warm, and you’re funny, and you’re so, so kind. You’re the strongest, bravest person I know. You’re beautiful, even though I know you don’t think so. You’re so beautiful that even though I keep trying, art never feels like enough to get it. You’re a great cook and baker. You’re so loved by all of your friends. You take care of me when I’ve been working too long or when I’m overwhelmed or when I’ve had a terrible day. You hum when you’re doing little tasks alone, but I don’t think you ever would in front of anyone else. You like coffee more than tea, and you like really extravagant espresso drinks with different flavors, and I tease you for that a lot. You’re Penny’s person, and she loves you almost as much as I do. You’re so, so good to people, even though the world wasn’t good to you.”

“Steve,” Bucky whispers, like he can’t bear it, and holds onto him tighter.

“You’re good with kids. You steal my clothes and look better in them than I do. You got me to stop eating meat with you a few months ago, and I love it. You’ve been trying to talk me into a cat, and I think it’s a fight you’re going to win. You’re clever. You like rom-coms and horror movies. You read a lot. You like to paint your nails, and sometimes you do mine. You’re generous. You’re my favorite person in the world. You’re so, so wonderful.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything for two, three minutes. He buries his face in Steve’s neck and Steve kisses his hair and rubs his back and Penny nuzzles his shoulder.

Bucky tilts his head up and kisses Steve, so gentle and sleepy that their mouths are almost just falling together, and Steve can taste sugar on his lips. Then he buries his face in Steve’s shoulder and kisses his collarbone, and he doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t have to, because love fills the room like steam, like the sugary air rising out of the oven as they sit there, curled against each other like quotations on the kitchen floor, until Bucky breaks away to pull the tray out and set it on top of the oven as it cools. Then he tucks himself back into Steve’s arms and holds on, and eventually, Steve pulls him to his feet and eases him back into bed, where they fall asleep holding each other so tight it’s hard to know where one ends and the other begins, and they make it through the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr!!! thank u all for continuing to comment and read and leave kudos love love love you see you in 1-2ish weeks


	23. twenty-three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it has been a hundred years ive been so busy and tired rip here is a christmas-y chapter even tho its march

Bucky decides to himself the day they let Steve go home from the hospital that he will finally let Steve have sex with him. Steve has waited for him long enough, because he is good and patient and wonderful and he would wait longer, Bucky thinks, but he doesn’t want to do that to him anymore. Steve almost died for him, he can do this. He loves Steve, he trusts him. Maybe, he thinks, he needs to just rip the bandaid off, maybe sex will be wonderful and romantic and arousing if he just does it. But he wants Steve to have that.

They’re home. Christmas is in five days, and they’ve just finished their annual viewing of Love, Actually, which Bucky loves earnestly and Steve despises but suffers through once a year with a few snarky comments that make Bucky elbow him. They’re both laughing. Things feel light, which they are getting used to again. The movie ends, and Steve gathers his and Bucky’s empty mugs of hot chocolate and dumps them in the dishwasher, then settles back next to him again.

“We can have sex,” Bucky blurts out, as Steve is laying an arm back over his shoulder. Steve blinks, bewildered. Bucky pulls away a little and shoves his hands in his pockets.

“Buck—”

“It’s just—it’s fine, okay, it’s fine.” He reaches over and takes Steve’s hands. “I love you, you’re the best, you’re the greatest boyfriend in the world, and you’ve been so good and patient and we can do it, okay, it’s good.” His heart jackhammers against his chest. “Steve. You do so much for me and I—you deserve this, okay, it’s not—it’s not like I think you’re anything like they were. I’ll be okay, I just—when you were in the hospital I started to, um, to think about all the things I didn’t do for you, or—or made you do and you almost fucking died because of me and you deserve everything and I’m yours completely and I just want to make you happy in every way—”

Steve bites his lip. “Buck,” he says, “you already do.”

Bucky shakes his head. “You’ve waited so fucking long already and you do everything for me and I love you, and I know you aren’t gonna hurt me, please, I want you to have this.”

Steve swallows. “Bucky, I don’t want to until you completely, a hundred percent want it for yourself.” Bucky swallows hard, body slumping a little bit. He rests his head in the crook of Steve’s neck.

“But you deserve it, Steve.”

“Bucky,” Steve says quietly. “It’s not a reward for me, it’s not a thing anyone earns. You don’t owe it to me, ever.”

Bucky swallows hard. “But I love you,” he whispers, “and I don’t want to keep fucking… stringing you along and freeloading off of you and letting you take such good care of me and get the shit kicked out of you for me and not give you this one fucking thing and you—you aren’t Pierce, okay, you’re not gonna hurt me—”

“Baby,” Steve says, “Bucky, babe. Breathe.” He does, and realizes his chest is impossibly tight. “Buck,” he says, voice soft, “baby, as long as you’re—you’re talking about it as, um, something for me, we aren’t gonna have sex. When and if we get there, we’ll both be ready, okay?”

Bucky closes his eyes, violently relieved. For a moment, he imagines if Steve had taken him at his word and done it, flipped him over on the couch and yanked down his sweats and violated him, thinks about the sensations and noises and words it would mean, and he begins to shake so badly that Penny lifts herself from the other side of the couch and nuzzles against him. He shuts his eyes. He doesn’t know how to do this, doesn’t even know how to think about it in a way that makes sense because of course Steve wouldn’t be violent, of course Steve would be gentle and wonderful and delicate, but even after all this time it is so, so hard for him to divorce sex from pain in his head. He takes a breath.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. Steve kisses his hair.

“Don’t be.”

They stay quiet for a few minutes, bodies fitted against one another comfortably. Excited lights twinkle on their tree.

“They aren’t gonna hurt me anymore,” Bucky says, voice small.

“No,” Steve agrees softly, “never.”

Bucky swallows. “I love you so much. And I trust you completely. And I should—I should want this, right? I don’t know why I‘m not ready.” He winces. “I mean, I do, but I hate it. And I want to so bad. I just get scared.”

A million years ago, back before Brock and Alexander’s intrusion back into their lives, they had been talking and thinking about this a not insignificant amount. The first time Bucky brought it up in therapy, Jennifer asked him if he wanted to try having sex with Steve.

Bucky looked down. “I want—I want to figure out how to have it again,” he mumbled finally. “I don’t exactly want it yet, but, um, I want to—to want it, you know? I don’t want them to have ruined that for me forever.”

“Well,” Jennifer said, “do you wanna think about having a conversation with Steve about it with no expectations or deadlines? I think talking about it with him might feel like a relief for you.”

So Bucky nodded, and they had.

“Hey,” Bucky blurted out that night while they were doing dishes. Steve glanced up. “I don’t wanna have sex yet, but, um, Jennifer said it might help to—to talk about what would happen if we did have sex. And how to make it work. So.” He broke off, cheeks burning. Steve blinked.

“Oh,” he said eventually, and smiled. “Yeah. Okay. We can do that if you—if you want.”

So they sat down as if they were preparing for a business transaction, facing one another on the couch, and that felt entirely wrong, so Steve reached his hand out and Bucky took it and swallowed. Steve was letting him start, and he had discussed in therapy what he’d say, but now that it was here the words felt stiff and unmovable. Sex, for so long, has only been shame, and the idea that Steve could worry about what he wanted regarding sex felt suddenly absurd. He took a breath and repeated to himself that Steve loves him, Steve will never hurt him, sex isn’t something that he needs to commodify anymore. Steve waited for him, thumbing over his knuckles while he calmed down.

“Okay,” Bucky said, cheeks hot. “Okay, sorry.”

“It’s okay, baby,” Steve said softly. “Take your time. And we don’t have to do this now, if you don’t want. It’s all okay.”

Bucky swallowed. “Could you, um, hold me?” He winced a little; Steve smiled and opened his arms, and when Bucky leaned against his chest, wrapped his arms around him and pulled him in, his body strong and safe. Bucky exhaled. “Sorry, just, um. Talking about this makes me feel really… fucking… gross, and um. This helps.”

Steve kissed the top of his head. “I got you, Buck. We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want. There’s no rush, love.”

Bucky mumbled against Steve’s shirt, “No, it’s not that, I just—I don’t know. Feel like—like I don’t deserve to, um, want sex, or something.” He swallowed. “I know that’s wrong. I actually—I think talking about it might, um, help with that, a little? So I just—I wanted to try.”

“Whatever you want, Buck,” Steve said softly.

“Okay,” Bucky started, “okay, um. Basically, I love you a lot and I wanna be with you forever and you make me feel so safe all the time and that—that’s still kinda fucking crazy for me, feeling safe. And, um, I don’t know. It’s been weird, feeling—starting to have, um, a sex drive again, and, um, it freaks me out a lot sometimes? When we’re kissing and I, um, I get turned on, um.” Steve kissed his hair, wordlessly and immediately letting him know he was good, he was wanted, he was right. Bucky swallowed. “And, um, I do wanna—wanna keep trying stuff, at some point. I’m not really sure when. Not—Not tomorrow, or anything, um. But it really, really helps how much you, like, listen to me and let us do things slowly and I just… I guess I just wanted to see what it feels like to talk about?” He exhaled, suddenly drained, and laid back against Steve’s shoulder.

Steve said, “That’s great, Bucky. Of course we can—can talk about it, and take it as slow as you want, and if we—if we do things and it doesn’t work, you know that’s okay, right?”

Bucky squeezed Steve’s arm. “Yeah,” he said, voice soft.

Steve cleared his throat. “Do you, um—” he started, and Bucky laughed, relieved to not be the only one with the sudden discomfort of a thirteen-year-old who’s parents have decided to explain sex to them. Steve laughed too. “Just—in the future, if we were gonna try having sex, would it—Would you be more comfortable being, um. On top.”

Bucky choked out a surprised laugh. Steve grinned, sheepish. “Um,” Bucky said. “I don’t… think so? I, um.” He swallowed. “I don’t think, um, I’d know what to like, do.” In high school, they’d switched off a bit, although more often than not, Steve would take that spot. “Not—not at first, you know?”

“Sure,” Steve said, and smiled.

“Also,” Bucky said, stammering a little, “um, in high school, you know how you’d—you’d pull my hair sometimes, and, um, hold my wrist and stuff?” Steve nodded. “Could you—could you not do that?”

“Of course,” Steve assured him, and didn’t mention that he wouldn’t have done that anyway, wouldn’t expect or want anything but explicitly vanilla sex from Bucky after everything. Bucky relaxed a little against him.

“Could you not, um.” Bucky paused, and shrank a little in Steve’s arms. “Sorry,” he whispered. Steve shook his head. “Could you not call me certain things, too?”

“Yeah,” Steve said quietly. “Yeah, of course, Buck. Like—like what?”

Bucky’s breathing had become short by then. Steve rubbed his back. “Just—there were some, um, things that—that guys would say to me, um. You know. Slut. Whore.” He winced. “Um. ‘Good boy.’ Stuff like—like, ‘you were born to do this.’ Um. Yeah.”

Steve took a deep breath. “Buck,” he said softly, “I’d never, ever say those things to you.”

Bucky nodded. “I know. Sorry. Just—people said it a lot.”

“Oh, Buck,” Steve said quietly.

Bucky shut his eyes. “I know,” he mumbled. “Can we not—not talk about it right now?”

Steve nodded and reached up; a strand of hair hung over Bucky’s eyes, so he pushed it back. “Can I just say I won’t ever do anything, or say anything that you don’t want me to, okay? Or anything that—Bucky, I love you. I’m not—you aren’t—you aren’t any of those things, first of all.” Bucky swallowed. “And I won’t, um—I just won’t ever, ever say anything to try and—to—we’re partners, baby, okay? You’re so, so good, Buck.”

Bucky rested his head against Steve’s shoulder. “Thanks,” he whispered. “I don’t wanna have sex right now, or anything,” Bucky mumbled. “I just—I love you, and you make me feel so good and safe all the time, and I really—I like making out with you a lot—” Steve laughed and kissed his head. “And I guess it’s just good to talk about, you know?”

“Mhm,” Steve said. “And we’ll keep talking about it, yeah?”

Bucky leaned up and kissed him, and Steve kissed him back, and he hadn’t tried anything else. Bucky thinks about that conversation a lot. He feels so guilty that he’d brought it up and then backed off of it again, that this part of their lives had been derailed by Brock and Alexander.

Right now, Bucky shudders in Steve’s lap. It is an endless process, untangling sex from being a transaction, a thing he has to give someone to raise his worth. He takes a deep breath, then looks up at Steve.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “This is so—I’m so fucked up, that I can’t fucking—be normal about this—”

“Buck,” Steve says, so softly. “Bucky, you’ve been through so much. You’re the bravest person I know. You don’t need to apologize for—for this stuff being hard, baby. You—I’m just so proud of you, I know how hard you’re trying and you’re doing so, so good, and if—when there are times this stuff gets complicated, it’s _okay._ It’s okay.”

Bucky has nothing to say to that that doesn’t end with him bursting into tears, so he lays his head against Steve’s shoulder again and lifts his hand to Steve’s chest. He traces a heart with his index finger. Steve kisses his eyebrow. They’re safe.

***

It’s a beautiful Christmas. They spend the twenty-third with Wanda and Sam and Scott and Natasha and Peggy, the seven of them circled close in Bucky and Steve’s living room exchanging presents and laughing. 

They were generous with their gifts, because they can afford to be and because that is what their friends deserve. It is particularly rewarding for Bucky to give Wanda and Scott theirs, to watch these people who he loves who took care of him for so long accept things they deserve he can now give them. It makes him feel wanted, feel important. Natasha sits next to him, her head on his shoulder, and tugs her beanie over his eyes. She’s a little tipsy on eggnog. Bucky swats her with the novel she gave him.

Bucky looks around at everyone, all of his favorite people in this beautiful house that he owns with the best person in the world, his dog’s head in his lap, the air syrupy with desserts, and for a moment his breath leaves him. He is lucky. 

Steve, on his other side, catches him staring and nudges him, a small, wordless, _you okay?_ Bucky looks at him and smiles, then kisses him, soft and brief. 

Towards the end of the night, as Sam and Steve and Natasha and Peggy are busy breaking in the video game Sam bought him, Bucky drags Wanda and Scott into the kitchen and shoves an envelope with a check into their hands. They both give him a faux dirty look. He smiles, watching them open it.

“Jesus, Bucky,” Wanda says. “Absolutely not.”

Scott, beside her, tries to hand it back to him. “I’m not taking this much cash from you, Buck.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Guys,” he says, “c’mon. It’s Christmas.”

“Yeah,” Wanda says, “and I got you a freaking tee shirt and candle.”

“You already buy us dinner all the time,” Scott points out, “and you’re the baby of all of us! I should be the one giving you cash.”

Bucky replies, “You once handed me a hundred and fifty dollars to get me not to go out on my birthday.”

“This is more than a hundred fifty dollars.”

“Consider it all the rent I didn’t pay,” Bucky answers, and rocks his weight a bit.

“Don’t you guys have fucking… hospital bills?” Scott points out.

Bucky glances down. “Not to sound like a total prick, but we aren’t exactly strapped for cash.” The sweater he’s wearing was ninety dollars.

Scott and Wanda exchange a hopeless glance. “You really, really don’t have to do this, you know,” Wanda tells him.

“Shut up. I know.” He smiles and cocks his head.

Steve appears, wrapping his arms around Bucky from behind and nuzzling his chin into Bucky’s shoulder. Wanda holds up the envelope and says, “Seriously?”

Steve shrugs and grins. “Seriously. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

Wanda rolls her eyes and hugs each of them, then tucks it into her jacket. The other three sweep in, bickering good naturedly, and Sam kisses Wanda’s cheek and refilling her glass of wine, and the seven of them hover there laughing, and Bucky is astonished at his luck again.

Much later, Scott follows Bucky into the backyard to let Penny out and throws an arm over his shoulder, waiting for Bucky to shoulder against him to let him know it’s okay.

“You really didn’t have to do this,” Scott tells him.

“Shut up,” Bucky says, “take it. Buy the baby something she needs.”

Scott rolls his eyes. “A fucking diamond-encrusted crib, maybe.” He fixes Bucky with a look. “Thank you, Buck. You sure?”

“Yes.” Bucky shoves him. “Not that you’ve ever done anything for me.”

Scott snorts and shakes his head. “Love you, buddy,” he says, and smiles. Bucky hugs him, holding on a little longer than he usually would. When he pulls away, Scott swallows thickly. “I’m so proud of you, Buck.”

Bucky tries to think of a clever remark, but it falls short and he blinks a little rapidly. “‘Cause my boyfriend’s rich?”

Scott rolls his eyes. “‘Cause look at you. You’re one of the strongest people I know, okay? You better not forget that.”

Bucky has nothing to say to that. He hugs Scott again, squeezing his eyes shut. Scott smiles when he pulls back.

“See you soon, kiddo. Take it easy.” Scott squeezes his shoulder once before heading downstairs.

Wanda and Sam leave together; they’re visiting Sam’s extended family in Virginia tomorrow. Bucky is so happy for her. She kisses his cheek and he gives her a tight hug and then it’s just him and Steve and Penny again, the apartment still thrumming with hazy excited energy, Christmas music still faint in the background. Steve pulls Bucky into his arms and they sway to it for a few minutes, eyes closed, needing nothing but the solidness and nearness of one another.

“You okay?” Bucky asks Steve later, as they’re finishing dishes. He’s mostly doing fine, no serious side effects, occasional dizziness or exhaustion, but nothing the doctors say is unusual. Steve nods and kisses the side of his head.

“Yep. You?”

“Yeah.” Bucky places both hands against his chin and kisses him, faint taste of cinnamon between them, a little heavier than usual. Steve laughs against his lips, then drops the pan he’s been scrubbing and lays one soapy hand on Bucky’s cheek and the other on his waist, sudden enough that he laughs and fake-recoils but not enough to scare him. Steve kisses his nose and his cheeks and his face and he feels adored.

***

On Christmas Eve, they go to Maria and Carol’s. They meet Maria’s parents, both professors, both lovely, and they exchange gifts and Monica’s uncomparable thrill of being a loved child at Christmastime rackets them all up until they are laughing too hard at stories they exchange over dinner and harmless jokes lodged at one another.

Later, as Steve and Maria are checking on the pies and Monica’s grandparents are reading to her, Carol taps Bucky’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Carol says to him. He glances up. “Can I talk to you for a sec?” The initial anxiety of that question jars him. He swallows and nods, and they head into the hallway for a moment.

Bucky’s hands shake. Penny nuzzles them until he takes a breath.

“So basically,” Carol says, “I feel like shit for showing you that video. It was—You guys—I didn’t mean to make you have to experience that guy being a fucking freak. And also, I feel really bad about the stuff I said to him, trying to get him to talk.”

Bucky blinks, surprised, relieved. “Carol—”

“No, I mean, I know you know—or I hope you know—that I think you’re, like, one of the greatest kids in the world and I adore you and I think you’re unbelievable, as a person.” Bucky blushes and bites his lip. “And I just wanted him to say as much incriminating shit as possible, so I was goading him but it felt fucking disgusting and I’ve just been feeling so awful that you had to hear it. So I’m really sorry.”

Bucky smiles at her, then looks down. “You didn’t have to be sorry,” he says quietly, “but thank you.”

Carol cocks her head and gives his shoulder a squeeze. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, “I am.” She smiles.

“That’s great, Buck.” Then she slings an arm over his shoulder and says, “Shall we go rejoin our partners?” and Bucky laughs and nods and they do.

***

On Christmas Day, they wake up together. They warm and frost Pillsbury cinnamon buns that and eat them while opening their presents to each other, beautiful, lavish gifts that still feel appalling after all this time but that they allow themselves because watching each other get beautiful things is a joy, soft cashmere scarves and dark sturdy satchels and expensive lavender bath salts. Afterwards, Bucky tucks himself back against Steve’s chest, wrapped up in a new fluffy sweater, wrapping paper cast around them like red and green and silver waves. “Merry Christmas, angel,” Steve murmurs, and kisses his ear. Bucky laughs and pulls him closer. Penny, next to them, works happily at one of her new bones.

They spend New Year’s Eve at Wanda’s new apartment, a pretty studio in the West Village close to where Scott and Maggie are living now. She and Sam have just begun painting the walls, and half unpacked boxes are scattered across the floor. The walls are thin enough that they can hear the neighbor’s party upstairs but she is happy which makes Bucky happy, and Steve is next to him and he’s warm and safe and when the clock strikes midnight he kisses Steve without a moment of hesitation.

***

Two days after that, Steve works up the nerve to call the number that has been sitting in his phone.

He discussed it a week ago in therapy, where Henry gently reminded him that he doesn’t know if this is something time-sensitive and if it is, he might regret not doing something sooner. Steve dials it a few days later in the living room with Bucky, his hand light on Steve’s back, waiting. It rings three times. 

The lawyer’s name is Lenny Campbell, which sounds vaguely familiar; Steve has a brief, vague image of a party, of being small enough and annoyed in a stiff, cheap suit, being introduced to adults. “Can I help you?” he asks, after he introduces himself.

“Um,” Steve says. “Um, hi. I just—I had, um, a question.”

Lenny shuffles something in the background and then says gruffly, “Yeah? What can I do?”

Steve swallows. He realizes he should have thought about what to say first. Bucky squeezes his shoulder. “Um. I’m Steve Rogers, I, uh, I think you represent my father.”

Lenny doesn’t answer right away. Then he sighs. “Joseph’s a friend of mine.”

“Ah,” Steve says. His heart ricochets against his chest.

“Steve, huh?” Lenny says. “I think I met you at a party when you were a little kid. Seen you and your boyfriend in the news lately.” Steve blinks, startled by that sentence.

“Right,” Steve says, mildly annoyed. “Well, anyway. I was, um, wondering if you could… tell me how he’s doing, I guess.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. Bucky keeps rubbing his back.

“He’s not doing great, Steve,” Lenny says bluntly. “I assume you know he’s sick.”

“Yeah,” Steve says thickly.

“Treatment’s not working,” Lenny tells him. “It’s gonna be soon.”

Steve’s throat feels very thick when he says, “How soon?”

Lenny sighs. “Three, four weeks.” Holding himself up feels like a suddenly enormous task. He slumps a little, and Bucky wraps an arm around him. “I can tell him you called,” Lenny adds. He sounds unsure. “I think—I don’t know what you’re thinking, but if you wanted to see him, I bet he’d like that.” Steve doesn’t say anything. He hears Lenny take a hard breath. “Look, I don’t know—I don’t know you, or exactly what went down with your parents, but—even if you’re mad, I bet he’d like to see you.”

Steve swallows. He doesn’t say anything for a few moments, until Bucky gives his arm a gentle squeeze. “Sure,” he finds himself saying. “Yeah, um. Let me know. Or—or have him call me.”

“Will do,” he says. “Take care, Steve. I’ll be in touch.”

***

Steve carries it around with him all day, a heavy, writhing thing in his chest that he can’t shake. He talks about it in therapy that day, about what he would say and how he would avoid exploding. 

“I might yell at him,” he tells Henry.

Thoughtfully, Henry says, “You’ve earned the right to yell at him.” Steve huffs out a laugh. “What would you want to say?” Henry asks. “Assuming things go in a way that lets you say exactly what you mean.”

Steve scrubs a hand over his jaw. “I guess, um. ‘You guys were fucking insane to do that to me, and it’s hard to know how I can ever forgive you, but you’re about to die so maybe I’ll give you a chance to apologize.’ Something along those lines.”

“That’s really, really reasonable, Steve,” Henry tells him. “Anger is okay. He hurt you. Seeing him isn’t necessarily going to relieve it, even if he apologizes. But I think, hopefully, you’ll get some kind of closure, and you’ll know that you did even more than could be expected of you.” Steve nods. “If you go see him, is Bucky gonna come?”

“I don’t want to do it alone,” Steve says hoarsely. Henry nods.

For the last few minutes, Henry checks on the rest of his life: the head injury is healing fine, he’s frustrated not being able to work out but he should be able to go back to it very soon, he and Bucky are good, he said some worrying things about sex but Steve felt like it ended up being an okay conversation, things are quiet career-wise but that’s okay, no attention from biopic producers recently. 

He leaves feeling unsettled, like he has turned his room over in an attempt to clean it but left the mess scattered and unresolved and choking his space. Henry tells him that’s okay, that the anticipation isn’t going to resolve itself until he goes and faces it, but he’s frustrated all the same.

That night, after dinner, Bucky wraps both arms around him from behind and kisses his shoulder and asks if he wants to take a bath. Steve turns, exhausted, and smiles and nods, and Bucky takes his hand to pull him upstairs.

They wash each other’s hair and don’t speak too much. Candles flicker beside them, the scent of vanilla rising in the air. Steve sighs and brings Bucky’s hand to his lips, kisses the pink paint sparkling on his nails. 

“I love you,” Steve tells him. 

“I love you, too,” Bucky answers, “always.”

Steve kisses each of his knuckles. Bucky laughs.

“You wanna talk about it?” Bucky asks him, thumbing over Steve’s cheek with his prosthetic. Steve shakes his head.

“It is what it is,” Steve says tightly. Bucky gives him a long look, then nods.

“Yeah,” he replies, “but what it is is weird and upsetting, and we can talk about that if you want.”

Steve sighs and runs a hand through damp hair. “It doesn’t feel real, you know?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says softly, “I know.”

“He might not even call back,” Steve muses, “I don’t know what I’d even say to him if he does.”

Bucky watches him. “I think,” he says, “I think you’ll know when the time comes. That’s how it was for me, anyway. I’m not sure if it’s the kind of thing that you can plan for.”

Steve lifts his gaze from their hands and gives Bucky a weary smile. 

Bucky leans in and kisses him, very softly, the kind of kiss that doesn’t try to fix anything, just tries to hold you while the hard things spin on around it. Steve lays one hand on his back and one hand on his chin and kisses him back.

Bucky brings one hand away from Steve’s face and lays it over Steve’s hand that’s soft against his chin, squeezing. Then, very slowly, Bucky moves Steve’s hand under his shirt, the fabric heavy against their clasped hands. Steve lets Bucky guide his palm to his chest and hold it there. The familiar pattern of his heartbeat thrums its way against Steve’s palm through the rest of his body.

“You okay?” Steve says softly. Bucky nods. 

Then Bucky shifts his hand to tug his own shirt off, but he doesn’t let go of Steve’s, doesn’t want to do this without him, and so Steve’s fingers close around the fabric and he tugs upwards and Bucky lifts his arms a little and lets Steve fumble a little, his hands careful, to pull Bucky’s shirt over his head and toss it to the side. He touches Steve’s face and kisses him again, and Steve’s hands settle over the side his ribcage and his shoulder, his fingertips moving in soft, small circles over his skin, softened by the warm water, softened by the tenderness he touches Bucky with.

“Yours?” Bucky whispers, lips quirking into a little smile.

Steve watches him. “You sure?”

Bucky nods. Steve lifts his own shirt and casts it aside, and Bucky locks their hands together, then kisses Steve’s fingers. Steve has been topless in front of him since getting him back but only a few spare times, at the beach or momentarily when he gets dressed, and never with Bucky undressed too. It’s the nearest their hearts have been since high school, the only barrier the air. Not that it matters, Steve thinks, his heart would root itself beside Bucky’s and grow there with a world between them. Already has.

Bucky reaches over and lays a hand over Steve’s chest, so Steve keeps circling his fingers where they’re resting.

They aren’t going any further; Steve can tell. He is perfectly okay with that. He focuses on the feeling of Bucky’s bare skin under his fingers, silky with the bubbles that surround them, memorizes all of it, even the raised scars and patches of discoloration. Bucky’s breath hitches slightly when Steve touches one of them, but he keeps holding on. Steve wishes he could undo them, smooth his fingers over them and wipe Bucky’s skin painless again, but he can’t, so he cherishes him. He traces the curve of Bucky’s rib; he’s still a little thinner than is probably healthy (there are days, still, when Bucky feels sick with terror and can’t bring himself to force much down his throat, can’t bear to swallow, he explained once, shakily, to Steve) but his frame is no longer gaunt and skeletal. Steve leans down and kisses his collarbone, chaste and soft. “You’re beautiful,” Steve whispers. “You’re everything I could ever want. I hope you know that.”

Bucky chokes out half a laugh and moves his fingers lightly over the back of Steve’s neck. He leans in so their foreheads touch, a quiet, perfect balance that must have been holding the universe in place since the first star burst to life, and then he rests his head in the crook of Steve’s shoulder and hugs him around the middle and _oh_ , bare skin against bare skin is so soft, there’s an electric current between them, and Steve half-expects Bucky to recoil but instead he pulls him closer. Surprised, infatuated, Steve kisses his damp hair and traces his fingers over Bucky’s shoulder, then cups his other hand over Bucky’s spine, cradling him. They stay like that until the water goes cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u all for your beautiful comments and messages!!! my heart is so full from them
> 
> cafelesbian on tumblr!! next week there should be a chapter but if not 100% in 2 weeks


	24. twenty-four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello all i know i said 1 week probably but then i got kicked off campus as im sure many of you did and couldnt write for a lil! however now that i'm social distancing (as I hope you all are!) i have a lot of time to write so updates should be more frequent

_January, 2013_

“Just _look_ at this,” Winifred repeats.

Joseph has looked seven or eight times, but he reads it over again. **Artist Steve Rogers’ boyfriend face of rape case against CEO Alexander Pierce: What we know about James Barnes.**

Joseph doesn’t know what to say. If Sarah were here, she would. He doesn’t know if it’s a blessing that she is missing.

George is in the corner, glaring at his mug. He hasn’t said anything since Joseph got there.

The three of them still spend a lot of time together, but the relationship strained under the weight of learning that Steve and Bucky had lied to them for three years and begun to collapse under the loss of Sarah. They have dinner almost every week and speak every other day or so, and they are Joseph’s best friends, but he doesn’t know if he likes them anymore.

Right now, they are in the Barnes’ kitchen, staring at the tabloid advertising their children who they haven’t spoken to in four years. Winifred had called him, her voice high and strange, and asked if he’d seen it, and when he didn’t know what she was talking about, told him to come over now.

It’s less rattling for Joseph, he supposes. He has already gotten over the initial frigid shock of seeing Steve in magazines and gallery ads and being told by people who don’t know what happened that they saw his son’s exhibit, and god, just incredible, you must be so proud. This is their first glimpse of Bucky in years, though, not a text or photograph or phone call. They’re both quite pale.

“I don’t see why we’re doing this,” George says finally. “They aren’t a part of any of our lives anymore—”

Winifred sneers, “Typical of you to say, George, when your son has been assaulted—”

George slams his hand down so hard even Joseph jumps. “When he says he’s been fucking assaulted, Winifred! Read this piece, you think if it wasn’t Bucky you’d believe this, a hooker claiming rape from a billionaire? Please.”

Winifred’s cheeks are bright pink with rage. “You did this to him,” she spits, “you wouldn’t let me go to the police when he ran away and started—started having sex for a living—”

“And you,” George shouts, “were fine with it! You’re the one who kept prolonging correction therapy, look what good that did, seven thousand fucking dollars wasted—”

“George,” Joseph says, raising his hands mildly, a warning. Their dynamic has been off since he lost Sarah; where the husbands and wives had coupled up as allies, Sarah’s rift upset the balance. George and Winifred do not love each other. Joseph understood why they stayed together years ago, when their child had just had an amputation and to split up on top of that would surely have been too much for all three of them, but he doesn’t understand why they stay married now. When they fought before, Winifred would call Sarah and vent in shrill tones and George and Joseph would go for a beer, but the more time he spends with them, their group not diluted by Sarah’s goodness, the less he wants to. He feels restless and agitated. He misses his wife and he gets up and goes to work his shit job at an insurance agency and goes home and drinks a beer alone. He ignores most of George’s calls asking if he wants to go out later. He finds himself annoyed with the way George talks to Winifred, exhausted after nights he spends with them and lonelier than if he had just stayed home. He finds himself wondering where Bucky and Steve are.

Now he knows.

Shaking, Winifred hisses, “I didn’t know what was—what would happen to him, I _didn’t know_ —”

George glances between them. Joseph studies his hands. On the table, Steve and Bucky, frozen against one another. He has the urge to turn the paper over.

“I didn’t know,” she repeats, largely to herself. “I would never have—I didn’t want—I just wanted to make him right, I didn’t want him to get hurt—”

George scoffs. “Call him if you want, Winifred. Tell your fag fucking son that we want him back in our life now that he’s moved from just being fucked by men to being paid for it. Hell, Joseph, tell your fag fucking son we could all use some of his money.” Then he leaves the room and slams the door behind him.

Winifred slumps into her chair and begins to cry. Awkwardly, Joseph pats her shoulder. He doesn’t blame her. He reads the things that had allegedly happened to Bucky and pictures the kid who had been at his house every other night for dinner for twelve years and his chest hurts.

“I didn’t know they were back together,” Winifred whispers. Half the page is taken up by a photo of Bucky and Steve outside of the courthouse, Steve’s arm draped over Bucky’s shoulder, jaw set, agitated and protective. Bucky is looking down. Undoubtedly, it has been edited, Bucky made to look paler and gaunter and more scared then he could possibly really be, but the image is still startling. In the top corner, there’s a photo of Alexander Pierce and his gorgeous young wife looking stoically into the camera, but in the bottom, there’s a small photo of Steve and Bucky that must have been pulled off of social media. They’re outside somewhere, and they’re both laughing. Steve’s arm is over Bucky’s shoulder again in this one, and Bucky’s face is half hidden in Steve’s neck and Steve is kissing his forehead. It makes Joseph exhausted to look at.

“It was gonna happen eventually,” Joseph says.

Winifred presses her hands over her eyes. “Did we make the wrong choice?”

Joseph doesn’t answer her.

***

The night after he talks to the lawyer, Steve wakes Bucky from a nightmare on their couch. Bucky is tucked up in his lap, head nestled in his shoulder, stirring and trembling until he hears, very gently, “Sh, Buck, it’s alright, baby, you’re safe, you’re home,” and flinches awake. Steve holds his waist with one hand and rubs his back with the other, careful and light in the dark. “You okay, love?”

Bucky nods, mouth dry. He leans back against Steve’s shoulder and shudders. Against his other side, Penny rubs against him, and he reaches out to scratch her ears.

The nightmares aren’t going away. They’ve stopped getting worse since everything ended, after a few weeks where they’d been nightly and unbearable. Now, he feels like he’s plateaued into a similar restless fear that he’d been working through when this nightmare began, slightly more intense, slightly more miserable.

He sometimes wonders if he will ever fully recover, or if some outside factor will keep opening the wound when it starts to heal over until he’s too tired to fight it anymore.

He rests his head in the crook of Steve’s neck and closes his eyes as Steve scratches gently over his scalp. He doesn’t remember the dream and he doesn’t care to.

“Will you braid my hair?” Bucky blurts out in a whisper. He wants to feel clean and at home.

“Of course, angel,” Steve tells him. “Wanna turn around?”

He nods and situates himself between Steve’s leg, leaning back against his chest. There is that, the sometimes unshakable terror and misery of the past that sometimes seems so enormous that the idea of conquering it leaves Bucky exhausted and defeated, and there is this, gentle, safe hands in his hair and soft words whispered to him by the best person in the world. He lets this flood him, Steve’s warm body against his, the familiar lilt of his voice. This is all there should be, Bucky thinks, as he starts to calm down, this is the only thing that should ever overwhelm him.

“Hey,” Steve says, fingers working carefully through Bucky’s hair, “wanna go to the farmer’s market tomorrow?”

Bucky smiles. “Yeah.”

Without pausing his braiding, Steve leans forward and kisses Bucky’s cheek. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.” Sleep is starting to come over him, contentment that, a few minutes ago, had seemed unattainable.

Bucky takes a breath. A day at a time, he repeats to himself. We’ll be okay, I’ll be okay.

***

It is finally a moment of peace that night when the call comes. Bucky and Steve are opposite one another on the couch, legs tangled up, blanket thrown over them both. Bucky is reading and Steve is drawing him, a quick sketch that he likes quite a lot that he thinks could become a good painting, clementine light from the fire washing the room warm, softening Bucky’s face.

“You need me to move?” Bucky asks him, not looking up.

“Hm,” Steve says, “tilt your chin up a little?”

Bucky laughs and obliges. “Modeling for you isn’t my most relaxing activity, you know.” He doesn’t mind, and they both know it.

“But you’re so good at it,” Steve teases. Bucky rolls his eyes and smiles. “You’re beautiful,” Steve adds. Bucky’s cheeks redden, and Steve is about to tell Bucky he loves him when his phone vibrates against his side.

Steve sets the sketchbook aside and picks it up. A small knot pulls itself tight in his stomach at the unlisted number, and he glances up at Bucky before answering.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Steve, it’s Lenny.”

“Um,” Steve says, “hi.” Across from him, Bucky sets the book down and sits up, shifting so he can squeeze Steve’s shoulder.

“So, listen,” Lenny says, and rustles something on his end, “I spoke to your dad and I told him you called, and he wanted me to tell you that, uh, if you wanted to see him, he’d be open to that.”

“Oh,” Steve says, suddenly hollow. “Okay.” 

There’s a pause, Lenny waiting for him to say something else. When he doesn’t, Lenny adds, “He spends a lot of time alone at his house. I’d go this week if I were you, Steve.”

Steve nods absently. “Okay,” he says, voice strange and blank, “okay, thank you.”

“Sure. You want me to… tell him anything?”

“No,” Steve says. “Um, no thanks. Thank you again.”

“Yeah,” Lenny says, “well, you have my number.”

Steve hangs up and lifts his gaze. Bucky clambors over the couch and wraps his arms around Steve’s neck, and they stay there, braced against one another, not speaking.

“He couldn’t even fucking call himself,” Steve says, every syllable electric with hate. Bucky slots his chin above Steve’s shoulder and sighs.

“He’s probably scared,” Bucky reasons softly. “He wouldn’t know what to say.”

“I’m fucking scared,” Steve answers bitterly. Bucky kisses his neck, chaste and comforting.

“I know,” he whispers.

Steve tilts his head so his and Bucky’s foreheads rest against each other. Bucky circles his thumb over Steve’s shoulder, even and grounding, as Steve tries to find the proper rhythm of breathing.

“He thinks I should go this week.”

“Okay,” Bucky says softly. “Still want me to come?”

Steve nods, feeling selfish. Bucky kisses his shoulder. “What day?”

“I don’t know.” Steve swallows, throat dry. “Maybe—Maybe Tuesday. Rip the band aid off.”

Bucky nods, chin brushing Steve’s skin. “Okay.” 

“Fuck,” Steve says, and chokes out a laugh. “Jesus Christ.”

“It’s gonna be okay, Stevie,” Bucky murmurs. “No matter what, it’s gonna be okay, and you’re doing the thing that feels right to you, and you should—you should be proud of that.” He pauses. “I’m proud of you. You’re so good.”

Steve lays a hand over Bucky’s and squeezes. “He’s gonna fucking die, Buck.” He’s said the words out loud, but the weight of them hasn’t fully registered. It still doesn’t, but it begins to, his scaffolding straining.

Steve doesn’t cry, but he slumps a bit. Without saying anything, Bucky hugs him tighter and combs his fingers through his hair, gentle and rhythmic, like soft rain against glass.

***

When Steve was a senior in high school, his dad had tried to talk him into joining the army. “It’d just be boot camp,” Joseph argued to him at any chance he got. “You’ve got the strength for it, and they’d pay for your college after. You know me and your mother can’t afford it, this would be a great opportunity. Women love a man in uniform anyway, huh, Sarah?” And she would laugh and roll her eyes and say that Steve would make the right choice.

The last time Bucky saw Joseph had been during one of these conversations, sitting next to Steve on the couch. “Tell him, Bucky,” Joseph said.

Bucky looked over and said evenly, “Women do love a man in uniform, Steve,” and Steve had spilled his water down his shirt.

“You’d make everyone so proud, Steve,” his father told him, another time. “Do something good, go get an education later. It’s what you deserve, you know. I’m sorry we can’t afford school, but this could be even better for you.” Steve rolled his eyes later and complained to Bucky, swallowing the heaviness that had come with the knowledge that in a few months, he’d disappoint his parents more spectacularly than he’d imagined. Then, of course, the disappointing had been fast-tracked.

Steve thinks about that when they go over to Bay Ridge. Its gray out, flat winter light making the world look flimsy and temporary. They take a car over. Steve’s heart ricochets in his chest and his hands shake, and Bucky reaches over and squeezes them. “It’s gonna be alright,” Bucky says softly. Steve nods.

His breath catches when they pull onto his old street. Beside him, Bucky seizes up too, his eyes growing wide and stunned, body shuddering with a breath as they step out of the car and stand there on this street that used to encompass their whole life.

Instinctually, Bucky leans against Steve’s chest and hugs around his middle. Steve kisses the top of his head and holds him back.

Images come to him, too fast and too vivid to stop; Bucky and Steve at six and seven, sprawled out on cement drawing with chalk, knees scraped and dirty, Bucky and Steve at seventeen and eighteen, laughing on their way home from a party, leaned against the streetlight on the corner, kissing lazily and a little drunkenly, careless about a neighbor seeing and saying something to their parents, Steve at nineteen, alone, waiting for Bucky to come back but not waiting long enough. The two of them now, arms wrapped around each other in flat gray light. Steve buries his face in Bucky’s hair and breathes in just to be sure he’s there, solid and permanent.

They stand there on the curb, staring and holding one another. Everything looks the same. Bucky stares at his parents’ house, the site of the beginning of the worst for them, eyes wide and glassy. Then he swallows and shakes his head a bit, and Steve squeezes his hand.

“You ready?” Bucky asks him quietly. Steve swallows and nods, and they walk up the front steps.

Steve rings the bell. He thinks about dropping Bucky’s hand, but doesn’t. Bucky leans in and kisses his shoulder.

Joseph doesn’t answer the door. Instead, Steve’s uncle, Josh, a man who Steve had honestly forgotten existed gets it. Steve never liked him. Steve visited him in his Syracuse house as a child and honestly believed the hours he spent in his dark living room trying to make conversations with his cousins he didn’t like and pretending not to hear his uncle tell his father that if he didn’t make Steve join a sports team he’d end up with a fairy for a son were the peak of suffering.

Josh stares at him. He’s put on some weight and started balding and has the permanent appearance of someone who hasn’t slept in a few days.

“Didn’t think you’d actually show,” Josh tells him, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Long time, Stevie boy.”

In his pocket, Steve’s hand constricts to a fist. “Josh,” he says, with a nod. Josh looks between them, eyebrows raised.

Steve thinks this might actually begin with a fight, which is not how he wanted this to go but which seems to be taking shape. He hadn’t planned for other family to be there, even though he should have, even though that was an oversight that humiliates him.

“Josh,” someone calls from deeper in the house, and Josh turns, shoulders loosening a bit. Steve’s breath catches.

Steve used to get told he looked like his dad. When Joseph approaches the door, Steve rears back from the shock of his appearance. He’s thinner; where he had once been muscular, his body has been eroded to something weak and angular. He’s wearing a baseball cap, but his hair is gone; Steve guesses he should have expected that, but it startles him all the same.

Steve opens and closes his mouth.

Joseph stares at him, then at Bucky, then at their clasped hands, and sighs. “Didn’t think you’d come,” he says eventually. He sounds tired.

Steve looks down and nods. “I came,” he says flatly. Silence stretches on between the three of them, so heavy and tangible it might be a fourth witness to this reunion. Steve bites his lip.

Joseph turns his attention to Bucky, who is rocking his weight very slightly. It’s easier, Steve supposes, to address him.

“Your hair’s longer,” he tells Bucky. A little surprised, Bucky nods. Joseph looks between them again. “Come in, then.”

They do. Steve draws a small, thin breath stepping inside. Josh melts to the side, mouth tight and disapproving but resigned. Steve catches a brief glimpse of his old kitchen, of the staircase that would lead up to his old room, but Joseph walks past them and Steve follows, heart heavy and cold in his throat.

Their living room looks entirely the same; same furniture, same paint, brass cross still mounted above the fake fireplace. The one difference is that any photos or art suggesting they once had a son have been tucked away, piled neatly into a storage box with the rest of Steve’s life he had left behind. In its place, there are other things; an generic landscape painting that might be found in a cheap hotel, ugly sayings printed in wooden frames picked up from Target, photos of the two of them, childless and smiling. Steve realizes he hasn’t seen his mother in five years, even in photographs. The details of her face are hazy in his mind. In the closest one to him, she is around Steve’s age, tucked into his father’s side, laughing. Whatever else could be said about Sarah and Joseph, they had loved each other.

Steve realizes he’s staring at it, and Bucky gives him a small squeeze to pull him back. When he looks up, his dad is looking at the same photo. Steve feels chilled, dropped into a place that should have ceased to exist.

“I suppose you know she’s dead,” Joseph finally says. Steve nods. “Who told you?”

“Your lawyer.” His voice is thin and strange. 

“Couldn’t be bothered to come to the funeral?” Joseph says mildly. He sits as he’s speaking, then looks at Steve.

Steve swallows. Bucky squeezes his hand. “You both said you never wanted to see me again.”

Joseph replies, “But here you are.”

The air in Steve’s chest has compressed into something solid and heavy. “I’ll leave if you tell me to.”

His dad watches him for a long time. Steve holds his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “Don’t. Have a seat.”

Bewildered, Steve does. Bucky reaches across himself so he can hold Steve’s arm as well as his hand. His presence, Steve thinks, is the thing stopping this room from flying apart.

“What’s his name?” Joseph asks, nodding at Penny. Steve, still too shocked by what’s happening to answer, doesn’t quite process the question.

“Her,” Bucky says quietly. “Penny.”

Joseph nods. “She’s a beautiful dog.”

Neither of them know what to say to that, so they both nod. Steve has started bouncing his knee.

“Christ, you both look older,” Joseph remarks. Bucky and Steve stay still. Regardless of the fact that they haven’t seen him in five years and he played a hand in ruining their life and they are now wealthy in a way Joseph Rogers has never dreamed of and if it came to a physical confrontation, Steve would win with one hand tied behind his back, they still feel like children again, sat down by their parents before being scolded, at risk of being dragged apart. “Your mother would snap at me for ‘Christ.’ You do look older, though.”

“It’s been five years,” Steve says shortly. Even as he says it, five years seems too short for the amount of growing up he and Bucky have had to do, too small, too finite to pack the suffering into. Joseph nods, tired.

“We went to one of your exhibits before she died,” Joseph tells Steve. Steve takes a hard breath. “I don’t remember where. She cried the entire time we were there. It had—It had a painting of the ocean, and it was raining.”

“The New Museum,” Steve says quietly. “My first one.” Bucky gives his wrist a gentle squeeze.

Joseph huffs out a laugh. “Must’ve been. I couldn’t believe it, when a coworker told me he’d been there and to tell you he loved it.” He pauses. There’s sudden and unbearable pressure in Steve’s head. “I was hard on you. I thought you’d never make any money selling paintings.” He shakes his head. “You know, until you started appearing in magazine features and none of them mentioned Bucky, we all assumed you two were together.” He nods at them. Steve stiffens, shifting a little to shield Bucky, shoulders inched slightly forward. He doesn’t like the direction of this anecdote.

“Who’s fault was that?” Steve snaps. 

Joseph grimaces. “Probably should’ve known,” he says wearily, half to himself. “You two were attached at the hip when you were teenagers. I was never like that with any of my friends.”

Steve and Bucky, instinctually, shift a little closer. Even though they are both legal adults, even though they own a house and a dog and a life together, even though Joseph is not a physical threat to them, the sense that he is going to fracture them again burns, sudden and vilely familiar. He sits there, watching them. 

“Tell me something about your life,” Joseph says.

Steve blinks. “Um. We live in Park Slope.”

“Together?” Steve nods. Joseph looks tired. “Rent or own?”

“Own.”

“Look at you,” Joseph says, with a vague wave of his hand. The clock on the wall ticks irritably, too loud. Steve bites his lip. “I used to wonder,” Joseph says, voice eroded to something weak and exhausted. “George and I, we both did. You two, together in closed bedrooms and thinking we couldn’t hear you sneaking out. Your mothers didn’t want to hear it, but we wondered.”

“Dad,” Steve snaps, the word tight.

“Look, I’m not trying to—I don’t fucking know. I know this is—I can’t stop this anymore.” Steve sets his jaw, and Bucky holds tighter on his hand. Joseph rubs his nose. “I don’t get it,” he says. “I don’t agree with this, I don’t think it’s okay” —he gestures to them; Steve bristles, shoulders thrown back— “but I—we were—we shouldn’t have reacted the way we did. None of us.”

Steve exhales, his breath stone heavy in his throat. “No,” he says, “you shouldn’t have. And—and it’s not fucking something you need to agree with. I don’t—it’s not your fucking call. You should _never_ have done that to us.”

Joseph sighs. “Yeah. Look, I—I’m sorry. To both of you.” He pauses. “I know if your mother were here, she’d say she’s sorry, too. She—she wanted to make things right.”

Steve closes his eyes briefly.

“We were doing what we thought was right, Steve.”

“Dad,” Steve says, and then winces a little. “I just—that’s fucking bullshit.” Bucky circles his thumb over Steve’s wrist, a comfort and a gentle little reminder not to go too far. “You kicked me out of the house. You gave me thirty minutes to pack. I was nineteen. You can’t have thought that was right.”

Joseph scrubs a hand over his face and coughs, the sound awful. Steve and Bucky stay still, unsure of what to do, until it passes. Eventually, he drags a hand across his mouth and takes a breath. “You knew what we believed, Steve. It’s how we were raised.” He nods at the cross. “It’s still what I believe.”

Steve snaps, “You still believe you were right to disown me?”

“I said I was sorry—”

“Dad,” Steve says, his voice wrecked, put through a meat pulverizer, “I’m not here to scream at you, but I—I’m not gonna stay if you’re going to give me some bullshit about your beliefs. It wasn’t about your fucking beliefs. What you did was appalling.” Steve draws a hard breath and focuses on the soft line where his body touches Bucky’s. His dad watches him, face stone.

Joseph doesn’t speak for a few moments. He looks down, thin hands twisting around one another, then lifts his gaze.

“I didn’t want to ruin your life.” His voice sounds so worn. “I didn’t, Steve. I don’t know how else to express it.”

“You did, for a long time,” Steve answers, voice hard.

His dad pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I am. Really.”

Steve takes a breath, the effort of it heaving his shoulders. “Are you happy now?” Joseph asks him. 

Steve rears back a little, startled by the question. “I—yeah. Yeah, I am. I’m really happy.” Bucky’s fingers twitch a little tighter against Steve’s.

“That’s good,” Joseph says. “That’s good, Steve. I’m glad.”

“Thank you,” Steve says tightly.

“I’m glad you’re doing well,” he adds, expression vague again. “We only wanted success for you, Steve. I didn’t… see it, like this, but I’m glad you got it.”

Steve exhales, the air thin in his lungs. “Thanks.”

Joseph studies him, blue eyes narrowed a little, the only part of him that hasn’t aged. “Your mom went to every exhibit she could,” he adds. “Just… just so you know. Maybe you’re right to hate us, but. We did the best we could, Steve. It wasn’t easy for us either.”

Agitation ripples through Steve, diluted by sorrow. He’s too tired to argue with that, even though it is self-justifying bullshit that, a few weeks ago, would have probably sent him into spit, vicious insults until he exhausted himself. But his father is dying. He just nods.

“It wasn’t easy for me, Dad,” is all he says, the words cold.

“I know,” Joseph says. His voice is thick enough that Steve looks up, but his face is even. “Hell, I could tell by your paintings it wasn’t. There was that one of you, and your—your shirt or chest or something was on fire in a park, and you called it something like ‘Missing Him.’” Steve bites his lip. He remembers that one, though he thinks it’s kitschy now; a self portrait where he is bent over, agonized, hands over a gash in his chest that flames pour out of while the other people around him don’t notice. That had been what it felt like to miss Bucky. Beside him, Bucky circles his thumb over Steve’s knuckles, a private heart. “That’s where your mom started crying. We didn’t want to do that to you, Steve. We wanted—” He shuts his eyes. “I don’t fucking know. It doesn’t matter. You’re with him again and you’re a millionaire and we’re both gonna be gone soon. Maybe that’s karma.” He coughs again. Outside, the sun has dipped low enough that the only light is a single orange band cutting between them on the rug. “I’m glad you came, Steve. I wouldn’t have wanted to leave without having seen you again.”

Steve forces as much of a smile as he can, his throat tight. “Me, too.” Silence flattens over them again. “Um. Is there—Is there anything I can, um, do to make you—to make this more comfortable?” The words make him flinch. He’s glad Bucky is there.

Joseph huffs out a ragged laugh. “Christ, I don’t know. Use some of that money to bring your mother back. Find a cure to stage 4 lung cancer.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, not sure how much he means it.

Joseph shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve just been waiting, since I lost your mom.” The sun has completely slipped away from them, and the room is dim and claustrophobic. “I—If you both had to—If you really—If this is wha—who you are” —Steve bites back a scoff— “I’m glad you picked each other, okay? Even when you were kids, I admired your friendship.” He laughs a little to himself. Steve nods. That’s the most he’s willing to give.

“Bucky,” Joseph says, sounding tired. Bucky straightens up and Steve leans forward a little, protective. “Bucky, I’m sorry for what happened to you, if I had any part in—in making it happen that way. I really didn’t want for you two to suffer.” For the first time, the weariness becomes desperation.

Bucky tenses against Steve. “Thanks, Joseph,” he whispers. Steve wants to hold him.

Joseph keeps studying Bucky; it puts Steve on edge. “I don’t know what it’s worth, but your mother was inconsolable last year, when all those articles were being written about you and that CEO.” Bucky swallows.

“Don’t,” Steve says sharply.

“I mean, imagine our shock when all of a sudden the two of you are holding hands on the front page of the Daily News in a story about you suing the CEO of our bank—”

Bucky winces, and Steve says, harsher, “Stop. We aren’t talking about that.”

Joseph blinks, then eases back. “Sorry,” he says to Bucky. Bucky gives him a small nod.

“It wasn’t easy for them, is all. I know you don’t think we loved you two, but we did.”

Bucky purses his lips, jaw trembling a little.

“If I could fix things, I would,” Joseph adds. Grief sharpens his words at their edges. His body is sanded down with exhaustion.

“Thank you,” Steve whispers. His dad gives him the closest thing to a smile he has gotten so far. “Dad, you’re tired.”

Joseph nods vaguely. “Jesus, this fucking disease.” He tilts his head back and briefly shuts his eyes. “I’m glad you came, Steve,” he repeats. “Thank you.”

Steve swallows hard. “Yeah. Of course. I’m, um. Yeah. Me, too.” A weak, childish part of him hopes for a “Come again,” or, “Stay if you want,” or even, “I love you.” He shakes himself out of it, furious.

“You okay if I don’t walk you out?” Joseph asks him. Steve nods.

“Yeah, rest.” He stands, legs lead-heavy. Bucky places a hand on his arm to steady him.

“Take care, you two,” Joseph tells them. “I am glad I saw you.”

Steve, on his way past him, squeezes his dad’s shoulder. Joseph lifts a weak hand to touch Steve’s, lingers there for a few moments, until his arm slumps to his side. 

They leave the living room. Josh is gone, off to a store or for a walk. Steve blinks hard, then looks up the staircase.

“You want to?” Bucky whispers. Steve nods.

The paint is chipping off the walls so badly it has begun to blanket the steps, permanent gritty snowflakes. When they reach the second floor, Steve’s whole body feels overheated and uncomfortable. Bucky squeezes his arm, and he pushes open the door to his room.

It’s been converted into something as impersonal as a hotel room, stripped of posters and photos and art and books and color. Steve had expected it, but it jars him anyway.

He looks over at Bucky, who is already looking at him. Every hour they spent in here together feels like it has been scoured away. Bucky rests his head on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve kisses his hair.

Steve drops Bucky’s hand for a moment and crosses the floor to the closet. He pulls it open.

Immediately, his head hurts. Whatever he hadn’t taken and hadn’t been destroyed by his parents is there, stuffed into a plastic bin. He shuts his eyes. Bucky wraps his arms around Steve’s neck and stills the hurricane beginning to tear through him, so Steve turns around and holds him back, their bodies slotted perfectly together. Amazing, Steve thinks, that this room had once been able to contain the two of them in perfect contentment.

Steve takes the box, which doesn’t feel heavy enough to have contained the first nineteen years of his life. Bucky kisses him once, quick and soft, and then they go back outside into the early winter darkness, where Steve sets it down and wraps his arms around Bucky again.

***

Much later that night, the phone rings.

They are already asleep, but Steve knows before he picks up. Bucky stirs next to him, hand light on his chest, and sits up as Steve answers his dad’s lawyer, his voice thin and strange, telling him Joseph has died.

Bucky, behind him, rubs his shoulders. Steve doesn’t cry. He presses his hands over his eyes and feels exhaustion shudder through him. He doesn’t want to talk and he has nothing to say and all of this has sucked all energy and anger and grief from him like a black hole, leaving him feeling tattered. They must stay that way for a while, Bucky holding him and Steve shaking and not crying, but eventually they lie down again.

Usually when they sleep, Steve holds Bucky, but that night, Bucky curls himself against Steve’s back and wraps his arm around him. Steve’s breathing is heavier than usual. He is comforted by Bucky’s body, the familiarity of his limbs, his smaller stature enveloping Steve just enough.

“You need anything?” Bucky whispers.

Steve shakes his head. “Jus’ you.”

Bucky kisses his shoulder. “I’m here.”

***

The funeral is held in a church in the same ugly Catholic church that Steve and Bucky spent several insufferable hours of their childhood in. They don’t go. Steve doesn’t want to see the priest who had been the one to give Bucky’s parents the name of the conversion camp and he doesn’t want to see Winifred and George and he doesn’t want to see his uncles or aunts or cousins or all of the people who had been complicit in the destruction of his life, so they skip it and go, the next day, to the cemetery.

Unfortunately, it’s behind the same church. They step out of the car (they drove today) and stare at it, their hearts pulling tight in their chest. Steve reaches for Bucky’s hand. When their fingers weave together, some of the tightness loosens.

“Jesus,” Bucky says, “it’s been a long time.”

“It’s smaller than I remember,” Steve muses.

Bucky nods. “Who’d’ve thought we’d voluntarily come back here?”

Steve huffs out a laugh. Then he flips the building off, and Bucky laughs, too.

They walk tentatively into the churchyard, which seems to be its own vortex, a place sucked dry of color and life. Bucky’s red scarf burns against the pale winter air. Steve loves him.

It’s a very small cemetery, but it takes them a few minutes to find the gravestones anyway. It’s made easier by the fact that many of them are ancient, and the newest one is dark and shiny. Steve’s breath lodges in his throat as he walks towards it. They stop.

_Joseph Rogers  
1965–2014_

And beside that:

_Sarah Rogers  
1965–2011_

It hits him at once, a gust of wind knocking a glass down to shatter. Steve bends over and sobs so hard he loses his breath and hits the ground in his knees. Bucky kneels beside him and wraps both arms around him and hugs him and combs his fingers through his hair as he shudders and cries, for all that has happened to him, for all the good and all the reprehensible things his parents did, for his dad’s half apology and his mother crying for him in an art gallery and for the fact that now neither Joseph nor Sarah will be able to improve. What they did to him is what he got, and what they did and didn’t do to try to fix it is all that’s left to pick over. 

Steve cries until he can’t anymore. Then they sit there in silence, surrounded by stones, until Steve lifts his head again.

Steve kisses Bucky, possibly a tasteless move in front of the graves of his parents who didn’t make it to fifty, but he figures it’s the least they can do for him, let him kiss his soulmate in the place where they are gone. Bucky kisses him back; their mouths are slow and heavy against one another, the weight behind it grief and something else, maybe something hopeful.

They cling to each other. When they help each other up, dirt cakes the knees of their jeans and both their eyes are red. Steve opens his arms and Bucky sinks against his chest and they hold each other again, swaying a bit, until the evening sky turns the pale color of butter and they turn to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so 1-2 weeks for the next chapter, i'm still figuring out the structure for the rest of the story so we will see where that takes me, there's still a good bit more bc as you all know i fucking love writing this story lmao so i hope you enjoy and if not, no need to read! 
> 
> alsothis is what i did for 3 hours when i was stuck in my house the other day for no reason other than that i wanted to. thank u superimpose
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> lmfao see yall soon (cafelesbian on tumblr)


	25. twenty-five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late both the week and the hour my excuse is time isn’t real anymore

It takes them a few nights, but they go through the box one night, laid out on the floor of their living room alongside Thai food delivery. They also go through the box that Steve took from home all those years ago that he never, even once Bucky was safely back in his life, could bring himself to rift through, even though he’s moved it to three homes now. They start with that one, because its main contents are photos of the two of them together at sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, and they are able to laugh off the slight grief of it.

It’s mostly photos of them, cuddled up against each other in typical teenagers in love fashion, disposables faded by time. Bucky sits between Steve’s legs, going through them while sipping his Thai iced tea, the two of them laughing and pointing—prom night photos taken by their friends, impressively shot pictures by Nat of the two of them pressed against each other at various parties, laughing, shots by their parents where they are stiff and plausibly heterosexual, a few inches between them. It doesn’t feel like his memories. Steve hasn’t looked at them since before he found Bucky again, when he’d stare at them until the colors ran into each other.

There are other things, some sketchbooks, old baseball caps that they used to share. They cannot bring themselves to throw any of it away.

“Some of these are cute,” Bucky says about the photos. “Maybe we should put them up.”

“Yeah?” Steve says. “They don’t make you sad, at all?”

Bucky looks back at him. “A little. But I’m—I still think I—I don’t know. I’m happy that I’m with you, now.”

Steve moves his hand over Bucky’s and squeezes. “Me, too.”

And so a few of them do go up, tacked on their bedroom wall next to the more recent, higher quality photos, in small frames in their living rooms, next to an easel in the studio so Steve can paint it. 

Steve thinks about his dad some, but not as much as he had expected. He passes a dad giving his kid a piggyback ride and his heart pins itself still, he holds Bucky while he’s sleeping and feels a brief and sickening wave of anger, he remembers suddenly while making coffee or working on a painting and fatigue comes over him. He is sad in a way that doesn’t hurt. When he tries to ineloquently explain this to Bucky, Bucky lays a hand over Steve’s chest and gives him a long, understanding look.

“It makes sense,” Bucky tells him softly. “He—He wasn’t in your life, and so it isn’t like you lost him, exactly, but you had this thing with him that was a lot, you know. And it dredged up a lot of feelings, and so of course you’re thinking about it, but it isn’t like… I don’t know, it’s not exactly like you lost a parent.”

Steve smiles tiredly at him. “So I’m not a sociopath, then?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Bucky says, “I think everyone who drinks black coffee might be one.”

Steve bursts out laughing and shoves him. “Punk,” he says, then touches Bucky’s hand on his chest and kisses him.

***

A month passes.

Things return, incrementally, to some version of normal that they had had once, lazy breakfasts cooked in pajamas at eleven am, long, quiet days across from one another in the studio, chilly evening walks in the park, the sky a dazzling winter orange, Penny silhouetting herself against it as she chases a ball, dinners and movies out with friends, their lives quiet and nervously peaceful.

They celebrate Bucky’s twenty-second birthday at home with their friends. Traditionally, Bucky has hated his birthdays because they were a reminder of his being when all he wanted was to escape it. Even last year, wrapped in love from Steve, things had felt temporary and fragile, a game he was playing, his life constructed out of pretty, fragile paper. The two years before that, Wanda and Scott had taken care of him, had gotten him to stay home and made him box mix cake and given him little, affordable things that he still cherishes, tiny notebooks and a soft Target blanket and beanies, but he had always fallen asleep feeling hollow and dirty and saturated with dread about the next day. 

So, when the date approaches and he finds himself not flinching away from it, it surprises him. Steve asks him a few weeks before what he wants to do 

“I, um, I thought it might be fun if we, like, made little hors d'oeuvres and cocktails and a classy meal—” He’s blushing a little. “And our friends came over and stuff, and maybe people dressed up.”

Steve is looking at him with such warmth Bucky thinks it might set the kitchen up in a blaze. “That sounds amazing,” Steve tells him, grinning. “That’s gonna be so fun. Let’s pick a night.”

They end up doing it on the actual date, a Saturday. Steve wakes Bucky up with breakfast in bed, pancakes swelled to perfection and croissants and a cinnamon iced latte he picked up for Bucky while he was still asleep. “Happy birthday, angel,” Steve says, his voice so fond, and kisses Bucky’s cheek. Bucky laughs and pulls him clumsily back into bed, where they stay for the next hour, eating breakfast and kissing and laughing and letting Penny lick their fingers.

“What do you wanna do today?”

What they do is get up and take Penny to the park, letting her off leash so she can lope across the wide field and swing back to them every few minutes. Then, at home, they make hot chocolate and Bucky opens the presents Steve bought and wrapped for him, ridiculously thoughtful, ridiculously nice gifts, fancy monogrammed notebooks and soft lotion and a new long peacoat and a cute new set of expensive baking things with a baby pink apron, among other things, and Bucky wraps his arms around Steve’s neck and kisses him while giggling thanks. Then they start on the food for tonight. They could have catered, but Bucky wanted to cook, so he crimps mini pie crusts and tosses a salad and, delighted, produces mini umbrellas to stick in drinks as Steve hovers fondly and helps him. His hair is up and he’s wearing his new apron and it takes self control for Steve not to kiss him every fifteen seconds.

“Hey,” Steve says, tugging Bucky into his arms. “You got a bit of flour.” He thumbs it off of Bucky’s cheek, grinning.

“Thanks,” Bucky giggles. Steve kisses his nose. 

“Go get dressed,” Steve tells him, “I can finish cleaning.”

“Okay.” Bucky pushes on tiptoes to kiss him and then vanishes. He comes down twenty minutes later when Steve has pulled out the crisp, warm cheddar and spinach pastries. 

“You outdid yourself, you know,” Steve says, glancing around the kitchen. “You also look fantastic.” He’s wearing a shiny dark purple shirt that makes his eyes look even brighter, cheeks pink with excitement, so absurdly pretty.

Bucky blushes. “Do you think this is too much?” He gestures around at the five complicated little finger dishes they have and the salad and the big serving dish of pasta, a little anxious. “Should I have just ordered pizza?”

“God, no.” Steve kisses his forehead without touching him, hands still dusty with flour and pesto. Bucky laughs. “Of course not. This is perfect, and you’re perfect, and I love you and everyone is gonna love this because you’re amazing.” Bucky nods and relaxes. “I’m gonna shower and change before everyone gets here.”

It turns out to not be quite before everyone gets there; Scott and Wanda arrive early and wrap him in hugs until he laughs and drags them out of the chill in the doorway. “Happy birthday, babe,” Wanda tells him, kissing his cheek before announcing, “god, it smells good in here.”

It’s the happiest birthday Bucky has ever had. He is getting accustomed to the feeling of being surrounded by love, swept up in it, but it still dazzles him when he remembers how lucky he is, how many good people there are around him. He is still working on shifting his thoughts into believing that it’s something he deserves but tonight, the violent, exhausting hurricane in his chest telling him he doesn’t deserve this stays quiet. He feels so in love with everyone around him, so unspeakably fortunate to have these people, to watch them with one another, the effortless affection in the room, so much of it for him. Scott throws an arm over his shoulder and Bucky nuzzles a little into his chin to make him laugh; Bucky pushes hair back for the third or fourth time and Natasha, without breaking her conversation, hands him a hair tie and blows a kiss. When he isn’t at Steve’s side, he catches his eye across the room and Steve grins at him, the smile small and private and shimmering with love, and Bucky returns it, always thrilled with the private conversations they are able to have with a look, a quirk of a smile, a half lift of an eyebrow.

“My favorite part of the year,” Bucky says sleepily, in bed much later, when they have said warm goodbyes to everyone and left the dishes in the sink, a problem for tomorrow. “When you’re only one year older than me.”

Steve laughs. “You’re still my baby,” he says, and kisses Bucky’s hair.

“I better be,” Bucky answers, smiling, drowsy. Steve gives him another kiss and reaches over to flick the light off and Bucky stops him, grabbing his hand quickly and pulling it back towards his chest, then raises himself enough to kiss Steve. He feels Steve’s mouth crescent into a smile and it softens everything inside of him into warm, syrupy light.

They lie in bed, making out like teenagers, giggling under the dim light of one lamp. Bucky is completely relaxed, the coils of panic that lie flickering under his skin, waiting for an excuse to arch along his spine gone for the time being. Steve is warm and tastes sugary, one hand light on Bucky’s side and the other brushing his chin, pulling back every few seconds to kiss his nose. They do this for a long time, until Bucky’s lips are raw and pleasantly numb and the heat between their body has grown thick and pulses like an afterglow.

“Is this—” Bucky starts, and swallows, mouth dry. “Is this too boring for you?”

Steve shakes his head without a moment of hesitation. “Nope. ‘S perfect.”

Bucky smiles. “‘Kay.”

He isn’t hard and he doesn’t want to do anything else. He can’t figure out why his body betrays him like this, getting hard sometimes and not others, utterly random and out of his control. He thinks, right now, if he were hard, he wouldn’t mind being touched by Steve, but his body won’t listen to him and it makes him want to cringe away from himself.

But Steve just kisses him, light enough over his neck that it doesn’t leave marks, because he knows Bucky hates that, and on his mouth and chin and cheeks and forehead and eyelids, slow and delicate as some sacred ritual, and all it asks of Bucky is that he lets himself enjoy it. Steve doesn’t push for anything further, doesn't even hint at it, but the warm, cradling way Steve is touching and kissing him is more sensual than anything Bucky can remember experiencing.

“Alright, love?” Steve asks him. Bucky nods, cheeks warm, flooded with some untouchable emotion, not quite arousal, not quite complacency, but total surrender of himself into Steve’s hands with the knowledge that Steve will keep him safe no matter what he does. “So, so beautiful, baby,” Steve whispers, as he kisses just below Steve’s neck, and god, to be able to do that, kiss Bucky with the tenderness and heat of foreplay without a suggestion of anything more. “You’re so good, yeah?”

Steve hesitates a little, pulling back in case Bucky wants to push him off after that. It was, admittedly, a risk, a possibly nuclear word to use in the context, but Bucky smiles, eyes bright and infatuated, and Steve, relieved, kisses him again.

They keep kissing, breathless, the air glittering around them, until Bucky pulls away and rests his head in the crook of Steve’s neck. Steve rubs his back, fingers moving, light and lazy, in little patterns, and whispers, “Happy birthday, baby.” Bucky smiles into his chest and kisses the fabric of Steve’s shirt.

***

There is still a wariness in the air, though, an uneasiness from reorienting from every fight they’ve faced only to get punched down on again. Some things resolve and some things raise themselves like scars over clean skin, an ebb and flow of ease that won’t seem to balance itself out.

Steve, one day in therapy, acknowledges that he is traumatized. It feels like an insane thing to say when his boyfriend could literally write the book on PTSD, but when he says, to Henry, “I think I might be traumatized,” Henry smiles warmly and says, “I think you might, Steve,” and they both huff out a laugh. Then, sombering up, Henry says, “What’s making you say that?”

Steve rubs his shoulder and says, “I guess my dad dying was kind of the… push that made me realize, like, ‘okay, I’ve been pretty seriously affected by everything that’s happened. I just, um, was lying in bed last night and thinking about—about the stuff that’s happened to us in the last year, and then about my dad, and the last five years, and um. I was kinda just like, ‘fuck, those are traumas.’ And it isn’t like—I knew that, um, getting kicked out of my home and losing Bucky and being alone and my boyfriend getting kidnapped and getting stalked and getting hospitalized” —He sucks in a breath, and Henry nods along— “were all objectively traumatic events. But I just—I guess I haven’t really been thinking about how they affected me, ‘cause, um, I’m not—I don’t know if I’d say I have PTSD and I’m not, like. Like I definitely don’t have anything like Bucky does. But, um. Yeah, I guess—I guess the acknowledgement of, uh, how all of that has affected me is, um, something I should’ve thought about earlier.”

Henry nods, giving Steve a smile. “How has it affected you, would you say?”

Steve runs a hand vaguely through his hair. “Um. The other day, me and Bucky went out for lunch, and some guy tapped me on the shoulder, and I immediately jerked back and, like, got ready to fight. And it was just someone telling me I dropped a ten. But that happened, and I was like, oh, okay, this—this probably wouldn’t have happened before, whatever. Rumlow or Pierce or whoever’s fault it was. And I wondered how often that was happening to me, which, I think, is a bit. And I just—I’m happy with my life right now. But like, the acknowledgement that, okay, maybe all of this has more lasting impacts on me than I thought, uh. It felt weird.”

“I think,” Henry says, “that you’ve had an insane year, and of course the things that you’ve been through were traumas, and of course they have an affect on you, and I think your acknowledgement of that is really, really good.”

A little uncomfortable, like the temperature in the room has been dialed up a few degrees too high, Steve cuts in, “But I’m not—I mean, like I said, I’m pretty happy. And I—when I look at the way trauma manifests itself for Bucky, like—this is nothing like that, and it feels stupid to even say in comparison to what he deals with. Like, I’m not scared all the time and I don’t have nightmares and I don’t—it hasn’t really changed my self esteem, so I just… I don’t know.”

“Well, the things that happened to Bucky aren’t the same as what happened to you, and even so, not everyone responds to trauma the same way. And I think it’s worth noting that a lot of the terrible things that you’ve gone through have been directly related to him, and for that reason, his reactions have been more extreme—you both got stalked, and it’s awful for anyone, but it’s two guys who abused him, and that’s going to accentuate the reaction for him. Not, of course, to say that it isn’t awful for you” —Steve shakes his head, not hearing that— “but everything that’s happened to you both is happening to him with a context of extreme abuse, and it’s going to be easier for you to bounce back from that than him. Especially since your instinct when something threatens the two of you is to protect him, because you’re an incredibly good boyfriend and person.” Steve smiles, sheepish. “You are. And so I understand your reaction being to say, ‘this isn’t traumatic for me because the way it affects Bucky is so much worse,’ but those aren’t mutually exclusive, and I think it’s great that you’re recognizing that.” Steve nods, taking this in. “I also think there are ways it manifests that maybe you don’t recognize as responses to trauma.”

“Like what?”

“Well, you’ve told me that when you’re out with Bucky, you’re always looking for anything that he might see as a threat so you can make him feel safe. Do you know when that started?”

Steve thinks about it for a moment. “Um. I guess—I guess after he told me that he’d been abused. But I’ve been doing it more since last year.”

“Since the kidnapping?” Henry asks. Steve nods. “Steve, you love so deeply, and you’re a very selfless person, and your instincts are always, ‘how can I help someone else.’ And there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, if it’s not impeding your ability to be happy. But it’s good to recognize if it’s a reaction to the things you two have been through, separately and together.”

Steve says, “I’ve never thought about that.”

Henry smiles. “It’s worth thinking about.” A pause. “Do you want to work on any of it?”

“Not—Not, like, too much,” Steve says. “I mean, I don’t think I’m traumatized to the point that it’s affecting my ability to be, um, healthy or productive or happy. And I guess… I guess I wouldn’t mind being less on edge in public, but even that’s getting easier just with time.” Henry nods.

“We can still talk about ways to help with that,” he says. Steve nods, grateful.

“I think, though,” he starts, careful, “that I’m doing okay, all things considered.”

“I think that you’re doing incredibly, all things considered,” Henry says, and Steve smiles despite himself, “but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to the things that are causing you stress.”

***

Bucky has therapy that day, too, but he beats Steve home in the evening. It’s still far too dark for five pm and he cried a lot in his appointment today and he’s tired.

He feeds Penny and goes upstairs into the bathroom, where he lights a candle and pours in the bubble bath he wants and undresses, avoiding the mirror. Some days, these self indulgences still feel too luxurious to bear, something so at odds with what his life was that even when little spasms of the past are running through him, it can cleanse him of it for the moment.

He likes feeling clean and soft and pretty. This is nice. He breathes in heavy, sweet air and thinks about how easily all of this comes to him now, this comfort and absurd luxury, how lucky he is. Back at Steve’s old place, after he had been there for maybe a week, he had asked him, voice pathetically small, if he could take a bath. It had been so, so long. Steve had said yes (actually, Bucky recalls, and smiles a little, he’d said “Yeah, of course, um—you don’t have to ask me.”) and so he had, and the relaxation that washed over him when he slipped into Steve’s enormous, gorgeous bathtub (where a few weeks later, Bucky would sob all the horrible things that had happened to him into Steve’s shoulder) had lasted maybe thirty seconds because his mind began to spin out into _what if he comes in what if he wants to do that what if what if what if_ and he had white knuckled the side of the tub and waited and of course, Steve had never come. 

He talked about Alexander today, because it has been exactly two years since Bucky met him and the stain that he has left on Bucky feels darker and thicker and harder to scrub away with that knowledge. When he realized that this morning (he remembered because he’d met Pierce four days after his twentieth birthday and he’d looked at the calendar and seen the date) he’d dropped and shattered the glass he was holding and white knuckled the counter and Steve and Penny had flanked either side of him and each reminded him in their ways to breathe. 

Bucky told Steve, when he had calmed him down enough and swept up the glass and then hugged him for five minutes while Bucky trembled and tried to seize control over his lungs. “I’m sorry, baby,” Steve said quietly, and Bucky shook his head and clung to him. Then, after that, Steve took the subway into Columbus Circle with him, even though it was out of his way for his own appointment and he’d be in Manhattan with an hour and a half to kill, and kissed him goodbye in Jennifer’s lobby and said, “I love you so much, you’re the bravest person in the world, we can order in tonight and watch tv, yeah?”

Bucky loves him an impossible amount.

Now, under the warm pink water, he rinses his hair and breathes in his reality, a beautiful home and the best dog in the world and the love of his life on his way back to him. He’s meant to be working on accepting what’s real and taking stock of that, so he reminds himself that he is here, he is not in a club underground or going home with Alexander Pierce or shivering in the flat cold air after telling him he’d return in a week. He rubs his fingers over the wet glossy stone of the tub and touches his own skin, soft and clean, and shuts his eyes.

“Buck?” Steve’s voice, soft through the door. He jumps a little, out of instinct.

“Hey,” Bucky calls. Steve, he knows now, wouldn’t even open the door. “You can come in,” he adds, so Steve does.

There is too much bubble bath, so Steve can’t see anything, but Bucky’s heart races anyway. Steve sees him and smiles so warmly that Bucky relaxes a little, his heart unwinding itself a bit the way it does every time Steve comes home to him, the endless relief of surviving another day without losing him.

“Hey,” Steve says, and grins. “Indian tonight? I could seriously go for some Kurma.”

“Sure,” Bucky laughs. “Henry okay?”

“Mhm.” Steve hovers in the doorway. “Yeah. Intense.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Good, I think.”

“That’s good.” Bucky smiles.

“Jennifer?”

Bucky takes a breath. “Good. Intense, too.”

“You doing okay?” Steve asks him, a little worried. Bucky nods. “You need anything?”

“‘M okay,” Bucky tells him. Steve nods.

“Can I kiss you?” When Bucky nods, Steve crosses the room and leans down, brushing a kiss against his forehead, one hand light on his chin. Bucky has the urge to hold him there, to bury himself in that moment and let it shield him from the barbed wire memories that tightened against him all day. “I’m gonna order,” Steve says, when he stands again. “Take your time—”

“Steve?” Bucky says quietly. Steve stops talking and raises his eyebrows. “You, um. You wanna join me?”

Steve manages to look not too-obviously surprised. “You sure?” Bucky nods. Steve’s blue eyes go huge. “Yeah,” he says, and grins. “Sure, baby.” Bucky bites his lip against a smile. “Just let me rinse the subway off of me,” Steve says, “don’t wanna get into your lovely little set up covered in Manhattan grime.”

Bucky laughs. “Okay.”

Steve strips down to boxers and a tee shirt. Bucky watches him soak himself through the clouded shower glass, lathering himself in soap and rinsing it off quickly, the whole thing taking under two minutes. Steve leaves little crystal droplets of water over the floor as he hurries to the bathtub, making Bucky fake scoff at him.

“Steve?” Bucky says quietly. Steve glances at him. “You don’t—you don’t have to wear those.” The thought of it overwhelms him a bit, not bad, just new, just a thing he wants to try,.

Steve hesitates. “Are you sure?” Bucky nods. “Okay,” Steve says gently, and pulls off his shirt, then his boxers, sheepish even though he’s definitely the most attractive man in the world and Bucky saw him naked when he was seventeen and he shouldn’t be. Bucky momentarily appreciates his movie-star hot boyfriend before Steve settles in across from him. His breath catches, a little nervous, but mostly okay.

Bucky shifts himself around so he can lean into Steve’s arms. He’s becoming more comfortable with being topless in front of Steve, which is both hopeful and terrifying. He always has to fight the initial resistance, the urge to cover what he is, protect Steve from the awfulness of it, but he has to tell himself that Steve has seen him already and still loves him, Steve doesn’t think he’s ugly and terrible and disgusting. Now, with all his insight into Bucky’s brain and all of his knowledge of what Bucky is repeating to himself so that he doesn’t shrink away and hide himself again, he kisses Bucky’s cheek and whispers, “So beautiful, baby.”

Bucky squeezes his hand. The sensation isn’t bad, there’s just so much of it that a part of him wants to squirm away, but he makes himself stay still at least until he can recognize what he wants. Steve’s chest against his back, his warm arms enveloping Bucky’s, his strong thighs against Bucky’s side. He shifts so he isn’t quite in Steve’s lap, so the places they are touching aren’t sexual, because he imagines it for a moment and decides too much, right now.

“I don’t wanna have sex,” Bucky says quietly. Steve nods. “I just, um. Wanna be close to you.” Bucky turns again so he’s facing Steve again. Steve touches his face, his palms light and warm.

“I’m here, love,” Steve whispers. 

“I know.”

Steve kisses him, very slow, waiting for Bucky to reciprocate it. This is familiar, this vulnerability, Steve and Bucky undressed and in love in a bathtub. This, Bucky used to think, was one of the simplest, happiest ways to exist in the world. He swabs a finger of suds and drags it down Steve’s nose; Steve laughs, and Bucky smiles.

“I love you,” Steve says. Bucky leans in and nuzzles his nose so some of the bubbles tickle his skin.

“I know,” he says, and they both laugh. “I love you, too.”

In the windowsill, a pale orange candle is reducing itself to wax, dripping and cooling in small heaps. Bucky rests his head on Steve’s shoulder and watches it. It calms him a little, the racing of his heart that, even with the knowledge that this is so good, so safe, will not quite settle itself down. This helps. He has, in the past, shivered through panic attacks and stared at brand new candles until they were nothing more than a burnt wicker and a mound of glistening color because it helps him relax.

Steve touches the scar on Bucky’s arm. He touches one on his chest. “Do they hurt?” Steve asks, voice so gentle, lilted with a tentativeness that tells Bucky he has wondered this for a long time.

Bucky shrugs and looks down. “Sometimes they feel tight. Mostly I just hate them.”

Steve kisses his forehead and sighs. “I love you,” he says.

“You just said that,” Bucky reminds him, squeezing his arm.

“So?”

Bucky laughs, tired and so unbelievably grateful for Steve that words abandon him. He turns his back to Steve so he can lean back, their bodies aligned and close. Steve runs a gentle hand down his spine, not touching too low and not recoiling from the scars, then hugs him. It’s so much that Bucky has to remind himself to breathe, bare skin against bare skin like this, so huge that it feels pathetic. It is such a strange, enormous feeling, to be this exposed and to be this safe, so much that he blinks back tears. 

“Buck?” Steve says, voice careful. “You okay? We don’t have to—”

Bucky swallows hard. “I’m good,” he whispers, and smiles. Steve moves his thumb in a circle over Bucky’s cheek. Sometimes when Steve touches him Bucky pictures Steve holding light under his fingers, warm, slow electricity that jumps from his skin to Bucky’s and trickles inside him like creekwater spreading over flat stones, flushing him out and leaving only goodness. It is no different now. He leans his chin against Steve’s hand and lets himself be lit up inside.

Later in the evening, infinite glittering raindrops catch and recast the bleak evening light against their glass back wall. Bucky has just come downstairs, wrapped in a blue sweatshirt of Steve’s, hair pulled out of his face, warm and sated. Steve smiles at him when he enters, sleepy and wholly content. Bucky crosses the room and touches his face with both hands and kisses him. He pulls away only a little, just enough that the air between them is utterly shared. Steve’s thumb moves over his chin.

“No one has ever been as safe as I am with you,” Bucky says, and lets his head fall sleepily into the crook of Steve’s neck. Steve kisses his forehead and cradles him, their shoulders swaying a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cafelesbian on tumblr !!! Thank you for commenting and reading it makes me so so so happy when I hear from you guys love you all hope you are safe and healthy


	26. twenty-six

There is a slight shift after that night in the bathtub, an acceptance on Bucky’s part, maybe, that Steve doesn’t find his body disgusting. Steve can tell how huge it feels for him, even though Bucky doesn’t talk about it a lot. 

It dawns on Steve, this transition, when Bucky changes in front of Steve for the first time since they’ve been back together. In general, Steve changes in the bedroom if Bucky is asleep but if not, he slips into the bathroom to undress and dress there. Bucky always changes in the bathroom. It’s one of the things that Steve has accepted since he and Bucky began sleeping in the same room again that doesn't bother him, exactly, but that he’s acutely aware of. So Steve never pushes him and never rocks the boat by undressing in front of him. Bucky has told him it’s fine, he should change where he wants, but once, Steve took his top off in the bedroom in front of Bucky and when he turns around, Bucky had been staring, frozen, pale enough that he looked a few seconds from fainting (“It wasn’t you,” Bucky said later, after about a dozen apologies, “I just—I didn’t expect it, and—and something about the way you moved, I guess…”). They had a similar conversation at the beach that summer.

“You don’t have to ask me if you can be shirtless at the beach,” Bucky told him, after Steve had.

“But will you be more comfortable if I’m not?” Steve pressed. “‘Cause I can wear a tank top, Buck, it’s not a big deal. Promise.” And Bucky promised him it was fine, he didn’t have to wear one so he hadn’t, and it had been fine until Steve put an arm around Bucky later and Bucky went still and stiff against Steve’s chest and Steve, feeling awful, had pulled a tee on and gone to hug him again. Bucky never gave a hint of an indication that he would take his own top off, and Steve hadn’t pressed him for it.

So that Saturday morning, they both wake up later than usual and then snuggle closer, pressing sleepy kisses to one another’s faces and enjoying the fact that this is their reality. “Wanna go to the diner?” Steve asks him, and Bucky smiles and nods, and they kiss for a minute more before Bucky stands and stretches.

Steve rolls over and reads a few emails, none of them pressing, and when he looks up again, Bucky is pulling his shirt off, back to Steve, shoulders braced a little. The scarring on Bucky’s back always seems almost quaint in comparison to the way Bucky speaks about it—each time, Steve finds himself preparing for something much worse than what he ends up seeing—but when he isn’t getting ready to reassure Bucky that it’s not so bad, it seems more severe, harsher in the milky morning light. Bucky brushes hair out of his face anxiously and pulls on a sweater, body sagging under the safety of clothing again, and then turns to look at Steve. Steve gives him a smile that promises him he’s okay, he hasn’t done something wrong, he will not be rejected with some unbelievable cruelty the way his brain is telling him he will. Bucky smiles back, shy, so Steve stands and crosses the room to kiss his cheek.

He does it a few times more in the next two weeks; there is something utterly heartbreaking in the way that Bucky has to fight to allow himself this thing that he should be able to take for granted, the exhausting process his thoughts go through, grinding themselves to sharp-edged bits of anxiety that he has to sweep aside to really believe it is safe for him to get dressed in front of Steve. Steve, at first, was unsure about how to let him know it was okay, whether to hold him or kiss him or tell him he’s proud, or if it was better to let it be and not draw attention. The first time, Steve kissed him and then let Bucky wrap his arms around Steve’s neck and lean against him, and that seemed to soothe him enough that by the time they left for breakfast, Bucky was completely calm, so every day is some variation of that, something small to let Bucky know he’s loved and safe and right. One morning, Steve wakes up and realizes he’s late to a meeting with Clint and a potential client for a large, expensive commision and he tosses respectable clothes on and shouts goodbye to Bucky before half sprinting to the F train to meet said client for coffee (He gets the commission).

The next few days, Steve notices, Bucky doesn’t get dressed or undressed in front of him. He doesn’t think much of it. Bucky is a little quiet that week, but sometimes unshakeable misery settles over him and he spends a few days more fragile than usual, delicate and raw like bruised fruit, so Steve is gentle with him and never pushes him for anything. He worries; he always does, but there is nothing especially panic-inducing so he doesn’t ask.

One afternoon, Steve is getting back from lunch with Sam in the East Village. It’s dark, brutal wind blowing pinpricks of chill in his face, the kind of cold he can never again feel without thinking about Bucky sleeping outside in it. Bucky’s home already, something salty and rich cooking and wrapping Steve in unimaginable contentment when he opens the front door. He has barely stepped into the kitchen when Bucky turns to him and blurts out, “Are we okay?”

Bewildered, Steve stops, then blinks, then runs over whatever might have happened to make Bucky ask that. “Uh,” he says, “yeah. Yeah, of course.” Whatever is on the pot hisses steam into the air; Bucky reaches over to turn it off. “Right?”

Not looking at him, Bucky nods. “Sorry,” he says, voice soft and high. “Sorry, it’s nothing. I’m being stupid.”

Steve steps in and lays a hand in the small of Bucky’s back, moving his thumb in a circle. “You aren’t being stupid,” he says gently. “Hey. Buck.” Bucky looks up. His mug trembles in his hand. “What’s up?” When Bucky doesn’t answer, Steve adds, “It’s alright. I promise.”

Bucky takes a small shallow breath before whispering, “Nothing, I’m sorry, um, I thought maybe the other morning when you didn’t—um.” He looks down, embarrassed. “After we got dressed,” he finishes, voice small.

“Hm?” Steve blinks, not taking his hand off Bucky’s back. Bucky reaches for a spoon and moves it in fraught circles through whatever’s in the pot.

“Um. Are you sure it doesn’t—doesn’t bother you, seeing the scars on my back? The other day, um, you—” He breaks off, too embarrassed to finish.

Steve blinks, and then, realizing, says, “Wait, you mean I didn’t kiss you that morning?”

Bucky flinches. “No, it’s—it’s obviously—I mean, you don’t have to kiss me or whatever but I just—I thought ‘cause you didn’t do it, that morning, maybe you were trying to tell me you didn’t—didn’t want to see it—” His cheeks flush, and he grinds his palms into his eyes. “I’m sorry, I sound so stupid, I don’t—”

But Steve has already swept him against his chest, arms strong and safe around his waist. “Oh, Buck. Oh, baby, no, I was just an idiot and I overslept and had to book it to Clint’s for an important meeting and I was in a rush. That’s it, babe. That’s literally all.” Bucky is chewing his lip, but he relaxes a bit into Steve’s arm. “Baby, I’m sorry.”

Bucky shakes his head. “No, god, you don’t have to be sorry, I’m sorry, it’s so dumb—

Steve shakes his head, pulling back enough that he can lay both palms on Bucky’s cheeks and look at him. “No, babe, it isn’t dumb. I’m so proud of you and you’re working so hard at this, and if you’re comfortable with it I’m so happy that it’s getting easier for you. I love you so much, Buck. I love everything about you.” Bucky’s cheeks are still pink, but his eyes are clearer now. He nods.

And after that, Steve, every morning, kisses Bucky, twirls him quickly under his arm, holds him briefly, and the look on Bucky’s face is one of such adoration and pride that Steve thinks it will be worth it to do this every day as long as he lives.

***

A few nights later, Steve is in bed and Bucky joins him, kneeling, bouncing a little, nervous. “Hey,” he says.

Steve smiles. “Hi.” Bucky is biting his lip a bit, eyebrows starting to weave closer, the way he looks when he’s about to say something hard. Steve sets his book to the side and leans towards him to take his hand.

“So, um,” Bucky begins. “A little while back, uh, I was at the doctor and, um, you know how you asked me if the, um, scars still hurt?” Steve nods, careful. “She asked me that, too, and, um. I told her they do sometimes and she gave me this cream that’s supposed to—to help with the tightness, and stuff, and I’ve used some of it but I can’t—I can’t get everywhere, and—and you don’t have to, if it’s gross, it kinda is, I just—if—if you don’t mind, um, I was wondering if you’d—if you’d maybe help me with it?” 

Steve has been nodding for half the time Bucky’s been speaking, but now he smiles at him and says, “Of course, Buck.”

Bucky gulps again. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, baby,” Steve says gently. “Extremely sure. I don’t want you to be in pain.”

Bucky nods and twists his hands around one another. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

Bucky retrieves the bottle, shoved in the back of their medicine cabinet, and hands it to Steve. His hands shake while he pulls his shirt off, and his body is tense and hard—even now, Bucky is a little underweight, and when he squares his shoulders and hunches a bit, his ribs shadow through more than they should. His back is to Steve, but Steve knows the look on his face: eyes squeezed shut, lips pulled into a miserable, tight line, pale with shame and discomfort. Steve squeezes his shoulders very lightly, trying to get him to ease up. He shivers.

“Buck,” Steve says gently, “it’s just me, baby. I love you, you’re perfect, I promise you’re safe.” Bucky exhales at that, but the anxiety in his body doesn’t quite uncoil. Steve wants to rub his back, but he doesn’t know if that will make it worse. 

Bucky nods and doesn’t say anything. Steve kisses the back of his shoulder and then takes the cream and rubs it in his hands and then, very tenderly rubs his hand just under Bucky’s shoulder blade where pale raised lines cross each other like an overdrawn road map, splitting out into different directions where whatever he was hit with ended and began. Steve winces at the thought. He wants to tell Bucky that he is so brave, braver than anyone who has ever lived, but he doesn’t want Bucky to think his bravery is measured in how much pain he could withstand so he doesn’t.

Bucky shivers a little, so Steve talks a bit, a dumb anecdote about the bickering couple he’d stood behind in line for coffee this morning. Bucky doesn’t say anything. Penny is lying with her head in his lap and letting him stroke her ears.

“There you go, baby,” Steve says softly, when he thinks he’s finished. “That okay?” He holds his arms open. Bucky leans away from him and grabs the hoodie hanging off the bed (Steve’s) and pulls it on with a franticness that makes Steve bite his lip, but then he curls into Steve’s lap and shuts his eyes, face buried in Steve’s neck.

“That was hard,” Bucky mumbles.

“You did perfectly,” Steve tells him.

“I didn’t do anything,” Bucky replies.

“You were vulnerable and brave,” Steve says, voice firm. “That’s something, baby.”

Bucky reaches for Steve’s hand, weaving their fingers together and squeezing. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Buck, you don’t—”

Bucky shakes his head. “It’s gross. I’m sorry to ask you to do that.”

Steve sighs, then kisses each of Bucky’s knuckles. “Bucky. It isn’t gross, love. I don’t think that, not even a little bit, ever.”

Silent, Bucky turns his head to bury it in Steve’s neck. When he speaks, his voice shakes. “I just felt so—so on display, I guess. Just the fact that you were—that you had to be looking at those specifically, and touching only them, and that I can’t do it alone.” He swallows hard. Against Steve’s neck, his face is hot with shame.

“You couldn’t reach, Buck,” Steve says softly. “It’s like having someone else put sunscreen on for you, that’s all.”

“It’s not like that, Steve,” Bucky snaps. “I just—god. Fuck. I hate it so much.” He presses his face into his hands and exhales brokenly. Steve rubs his back, slow and even, until Bucky looks up, eyes rimmed red and glassy. 

Steve kisses his head and holds him while he shakes. 

“He—he—he told me—” Bucky screws his eyes shut; his hand on Steve’s bicep gathers the fabric of Steve’s sweater and balls it up in his fist. “He told me I was um. Too deformed to be treated like a person.” Bucky shudders, a deep, rattling movement that presses against Steve’s body and makes him pull Bucky closer. “He _did this to me_ and he told me that.”

“You,” Steve whispers, “are the best, bravest person in the whole world, Buck.”

Bucky doesn’t answer.

This, though, like everything, softens into something easier, a routine that they fold into their lives with effort but without as much difficulty as that first time would suggest. Bucky gets used to the feeling of his body being safe with someone else, the knowledge that even the ugliest parts of him can be touched like he’s cherished. This, he thinks, is like achieving something impossible, like being granted a wish that had once felt so absurd and foolish that even to fantasize about it was laughable.

***

The letter comes as they have accepted the decrescendo in their lives, folded in with their water bills and magazine subscriptions. Bucky is sifting through the mail as Steve makes coffee when he stops, frowns, and opens a small blue envelope. Steve sets his mug down and joins him, and when he reads it, his breath catches.

_Bucky,_

_I wasn’t sure if I should send you this. I know you said you don’t want to hear from us, and I’ll respect that, but I thought you and Steve should know. We didn’t come see you because we were looking for money. We were asked to. The person who asked us said it was for a story they were reporting on and that he’d compensate us for a recording. We needed the money, but we wanted to see you, too. I wanted to tell you at the funeral, but you didn’t come._

_I know you say you hate us, and I know this won’t help that. Please, please know that I did it because I wanted to see you. Please call me._

_Mom_

“Oh, my fucking _god_ ,” Bucky says. He slumps a little, as if the shock of it physically pulls him down, and Steve touches his arm, astonished.

Bucky stands, shoulders tight and braced, and turns away. Steve approaches him, hands gentle on his shoulders as Bucky shudders. Bucky lifts the paper and tears it in half, into quarters, into tiny pieces that flutter at their feet like ash. Then he buries his face in his hands.

Steve hugs him from behind, letting Bucky lean back into him and shiver, shoulders taut with rage, eyes screwed shut against crying.

“I should’ve fucking known,” Bucky snarls, and then he does start to cry, bending over a little so Steve catches him, hands over his eyes. “I d-don’t know what I expected, I should’ve—should’ve figured—”

Steve rubs his back and whispers, “You wouldn’t have expected even them to stoop that low, Buck.” It’s true. The utter disregard for their son, for his life and his privacy and his ability to trust anyone, is more than he can bear.

Bucky clings to Steve, body quivering, more with rage than anything else. “Do you think—” Bucky begins, voice so small. “Do you—Do you think it was ‘cause—Do you think it was him?”

Pierce. _Yes,_ is the honest answer, but Steve bites back on it for a moment, considers the weight of it. 

Pierce had done that, back during the trial, paid off tabloids to report things about Bucky, dug up old photographs of him in clubs or unverified reports of him extorting people with threats of rape. It’s the same now, though the desperation is clearer, a story no one would care about on a website no one reads, a few thousand paid to someone to bribe Bucky’s parents to exploit him more. Steve thinks of them on ABC, stiff and made up, giving an interview on the two of them when the dust hadn’t even settled yet, when there had still been vague intrigue around them. How now, months later, they are desperate and pathetic and evil enough to milk this dry of drops that aren’t even fucking there. There is no reason for any news outlet to care enough about their family drama unless someone is telling them to.

“I don’t know,” Steve says hoarsely, “probably.”

Bucky inhales through his teeth. “What the fuck.”

It takes them a few minutes to find it. It’s on a website even below tabloids, the kind of link that is advertised at the bottom of the page of real journalism stories, clickbait that threatens to give a virus to anyone who tries to read the sensationalized stories. Steve recognizes it vaguely as one of the websites that had terrorized them when the case had crescendoed, one of the few with the worst rumors and the least evidence behind it. 

It’s short, three awful paragraphs and a link to an audio that had been picked up on one of their phones

Bucky doesn’t read it. He closes the window and the computer and then exhales through his teeth, a tired, exhausted movement, swaying a bit on his feet. Steve touches his arm.

“Are you okay?” Steve says, very quietly. “What do you need, love?”

Bucky leans into the steadiness of Steve’s hand, the gentle squeeze on his shoulder. The dizziness has already begun to subside, a terrible wince that came over him and carved the world briefly into shards of light, softening at Steve’s voice. He takes another breath.

“I’m okay,” he says, and squeezes Steve’s shoulder. “I’m—I am. Really.”

“It’s okay if you aren’t, you know,” Steve says softly.

Bucky steps in clumsily to lay his head into Steve’s shoulder, their bodies fitted perfectly against one another, as though the molecules there arranged themselves frantically for an exact fit, like the shore against a coastline. “I know,” he whispers. “I—I don’t know.” It’s a terrible, sickening realization, but there is something unsurprising about it. His parents at an event that they could never have afforded, the stilted, rehearsed words in his mother’s mouth, the interview they had done all those months ago with the same fake concern that really boiled down to indifference. The worst thing about it, Bucky thinks with another wave of nausea, isn’t them, selling him out for a few bucks from a tabloid site, it’s the thought of Alexander and whatever strings he can still pull for something like this to happen. There is nothing in the world enough money can’t do for you.

“I am okay,” Bucky says, his voice small. “It’s—it isn’t them.” He lifts his gaze to Steve. “I don’t—they can’t disappoint me anymore, you know?”

“Yeah,” Steve says weakly.

Bucky shuts his eyes again. “I just—I don’t want to—I just want to know he’s gone,” Bucky whispers, and now his voice does crack. Exhausted, he squeezes closer to Steve. “The—the fact that he can still do this is—it’s fucking insane.”

Steve sweeps a tuft of hair from his face. “I know,” he says softly. “I know, Buck. I’m sorry.”

Bucky swallows hard, and he forces himself to run through what Jennifer will say to him in two days when he tells her about this. He is in a safe home with a safe person, protected by locks and security cameras and a neighborhood full of decent people and their detective friend at the top of his contacts. This is scary and horrible, but it doesn’t make him omnipresent and in control, even if it feels that way. He squeezes vaguely at the fabric of Steve’s hoodie. Everything he does now, with no one on the outside but cheap journalists he owns and lawyers who have laws to stick by, is an attempt at revenge, but nothing substantive, not now that the person who would have really listened to him is dead and no one will take risks anymore. 

“You know we’re safe, Buck, right?” Steve reminds him, his hands moving in small circles between Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky nods, burying his face against Steve.

“We should...we should tell Carol,” Bucky says faintly. “Just to… I don’t know.”

“Yeah.” Steve squeezes him once more. “You… are you sure you’re alright?”

Bucky swallows again. “Yeah.” Penny nuzzles at his side, tail swishing importantly. “I am. I… I hate it, but, um. It’s not like I expected anything more from them.” Steve moves his hand in figure eights over Bucky’s back, listening. “And I—he—he can’t get to us anymore, right?” The uncertainty in his voice clenches in him, whining and rattling in his chest. He doesn’t know that, has never known that, but he takes in his surroundings and his protection and the facts, that Alexander is in prison somewhere else in this vast, dense city and really, the ways he can get to Bucky are finite now. He trembles a bit and Steve hugs him closer.

“No, baby,” Steve says, “he can’t.” The certainty in Steve’s voice rolls over Bucky like a slow, cool wave, soothing some of the panic. “You’re so brave, Buck. I’m so, so proud of you.”

There are other things, little indicators that floor Steve with pride for how far Bucky’s come and that even Bucky can acknowledge as progress. One morning, several days later, after Carol has assured them Pierce won’t be able to set anyone else on them with the attention the prison is giving him after everything, they are walking through the park, the sky the identical pale blue of Steve’s eyes, the sun a milky spot making them squint. It’s cold enough that very few people are around them.

“Steve?” Bucky says softly. Steve turns his gaze to Bucky, cheeks frosted pink, red scarf wound around his neck. He’s looking at the ground. “What if when we try to have sex—” Bucky begins, and swallows. “What if I need you to stop?” 

There are times when these things are easier to discuss. So often, Bucky feels like the weight of these anxieties might bury him alive, but little windows of time allow him to speak them and not crumble under shame. The early morning, when a hazy sun washes everything in soft, romantic light. Late at night, in bed with Steve, when he can ask these questions with his back to Steve, his expression harder to read in the darkness, all of the noises of the world shut out except for their breathing. In the bathtub, the air heavy with rose-scented warmth, where Bucky can pretend he is cleansed from his past. The park, now, empty and cloudy, like they’ve been dropped into some splendid world that is all theirs, like trees and grass stretch on forever instead of opening back out to the sidewalk.

Steve squeezes his hand. “Then I’ll stop.”

“But what if we’re already—what if we’ve… started, or I’ve told you it’s okay, or—”

“Buck,” Steve says, stopping to take his other hand. “If you wanna stop, we stop. That’s it. Promise.”

Bucky bites his lip, troubled. “But what if—what if when it’s happening you—I’d be leading you on and you’d be ready and I changed my mind after I already said yes? Because that would—it’d be unfair, I would be lying to you.”

When Bucky repeats things that have been said to him in moments of abuse, he can sometimes feel them, the words and the voice they were said in reverberating through him, ricocheting off of every part of him like some ghost being exorcised, leaving his body screaming and thrashing. He flinches despite himself. Steve keeps his thumb moving in the same circle over his jaw, a motion so small and certain that Bucky can latch to it and ground himself.

“Buck,” Steve says gently. “You wouldn’t be leading me on, babe. You’re allowed to change your mind, yeah? I promise that you being safe and comfortable is always more important to me than having sex.”

Bucky, eyes wide and anxious, stares at Steve for a few moments. “Okay,” he whispers, and buries himself against Steve’s side. “I don’t—I don’t want to have sex yet, um, I was just—I was thinking about—I don’t know. I just was thinking about it.”

Steve kisses his cheek. “I’m happy you brought it up,” he says.

Bucky’s eyes shimmer with glassy morning light when he smiles. “Me, too.”

On Valentine’s Day, Bucky wakes up before Steve to bake him heart shaped banana bread. Even in high school, they never really cared for Valentine’s Day, but there’s a giddy and childish delight in buying each other cards and kissing in their kitchen, bouquets laid aside on the counter, the air still sweet with sugar and flour. They go to dinner at their usual Italian place, a single rose propped in the middle of the table, hands held over the table. When they get home, Steve suggests a bath. 

Bucky hesitates. “Could we, um—I know we—I know the other day we didn’t, but, um, could we just… keep tees and boxers on tonight?” Bucky winces; even after all of this time, he feels like he’s ruining something with appalling demands.

“Yeah,” Steve says, without missing a beat, and smiles. Bucky tilts his head against Steve’s chest, a small, relieved _thank you_ that Steve answers by combing his fingers through Bucky’s hair, soft and effortless as if he were running his hand through water. Bucky sighs; he could stay there, held by Steve as Steve plays with his hair, in perfect comfort and happiness for the rest of time. But then Steve nudges him towards the bath, where warm pink water shimmers like stained glass, and Bucky laughs and tugs Steve along with him.

“Do you remember,” Steve says a few minutes later, when he’s working conditioner out of Bucky’s hair, “the third Valentine’s Day we ever had together?” It is easier than saying the final Valentine’s Day, although that had been what it was. 

“Hm,” Bucky says, “was that when we had a picnic on your roof?”

“That was the year before. It was when we tried to sneak into a movie.”

Bucky laughs, the memory rising in him. “Oh, my god. We went to that really crappy theater in Brooklyn Heights with the coffee shop above it and tried to get in through there.”

He can hear Steve smiling when he says, “Yeah. You remember what happened after that?”

Bucky giggles. “Yeah.” What happened was, after sitting discreetly in the cafe above said theater, they had tried to slip into a movie through a back staircase that linked the two. They had each bought a coffee with the last of the money they had on them, but when they’d almost made it, a security guard who had apparently been hired for this exact idea eyed them. Steve, ever the creative problem solver, pulled Bucky over to the single standing game machine—a pinball machine for an off brand cartoon—and asked Bucky for a quarter, which he did not have. So as the security guard watched them irritably, Steve pretended to play pinball on an empty machine as Bucky held his breath against hysterical laughter.

“You know the game isn’t working,” the guy finally said to Steve, with thinly veiled resentment.

Steve cleared his throat. “Oh,” he said, “I didn’t know.” Bucky faked a coughing fit before grabbing Steve’s hand and pulling him out, movie abandoned.

“Is that place still open?” Bucky asks. Steve has finished washing his hair and is just holding him now.

“No,” he says, “it’s, um, a bank now.” 

The wince in Steve’s voice tells him what bank. He swallows hard. “Probably ‘cause they didn’t get our money,” Bucky offers. 

Steve laughs, and the ease is back. “I wonder what that security guard’s doing,” Steve muses. “I’d like to send him a fruit basket.” Bucky giggles, turning his head, then his body, to kiss Steve. Steve keeps him very steady, one hand on his waist and one on his chin, the kiss slow and snug.

Bucky takes a breath and focuses on this, the way Steve’s hand is curled around his hip, the slow rhythmic, indescribably safe movement of Steve’s thumb over his chin, love songs soft from Steve’s tinny iPhone speakers. He allows himself to take this for what it is, a beautiful Valentine’s Day night with his partner, a lazy, sensual bath with the person he loves that could end in sex but doesn’t have to, and there will be no consequences if it doesn’t. He kisses Steve, the water loud and graceless in its pendulumic splashing against the side of the tub.

“Can I touch you, Buck?” Steve says, his voice a little breathless.

Bucky swallows hard. “Could, um—over the fabric, please?”

Steve hesitates. “You sure, love? I don’t have to, I promise. We can just kiss.”

“I—I want you to, I think, just go slow, please?”

“Of course, baby.” Steve kisses him on the forehead, then brings one hand from Bucky’s hip over the front of his boxers. Bucky makes a small, breathless noise when Steve begins to touch him, the surprise of it coupled with the real sensation sending a bolt of lightning up his spine. Steve kisses him when he works his hand gently over Bucky, slow and open-mouthed. Steve is lovely, his hands gentle and intentional, murmuring Bucky’s name every few minutes, and Bucky should be aroused, is aroused, but his body isn’t responding the way he wishes it would and he can’t get it to and the anxiety around that is inhibiting his ability to take pleasure here and he flinches.

“Hey,” Steve says, stopping, pulling back enough that Bucky can shift up. “Hey, talk to me, love. You alright?”

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers, “yeah, ‘m sorry, I just—I don’t know. I can’t…” He trails off, ashamed.

Steve, watching him intently, shakes his head. “It’s alright, baby. It doesn’t matter to me, really. You wanna stop?”

Bucky swallows and nods timidly. He wishes he didn’t, know Steve is being nothing but loving and good, but suddenly memories of other people’s hands on him, rough and careless, _Christ, thought you were drooling for it, fucking ungrateful, didn’t fuck you good enough, huh?_ drains whatever arousal he’d had so fast that he pushes Steve’s hand off of his waist.

“Sorry,” Bucky says again, voice small. “You—you’re being so good to me, Steve, I didn’t mean…”

Steve shakes his head. “Don’t be sorry, baby, it’s totally fine.”

Bucky nods and takes a breath. “It’s been such a good day,” he says quietly, “I don’t wanna mess it up.”

“You,” Steve says, pausing to kiss him on the head, “didn’t mess up anything. Downstairs, we have a chocolate ganache and every romcom in history on demand.” Despite everything, it gets a genuine smile from Bucky. “Shall we?”

“I love you, Stevie,” Bucky says softly.

“I love you too, baby,” Steve says, smiling. This, Bucky thinks, is more than anyone deserves, certainly more than he deserves, but he cradles this luck to his chest and promises empty air that he will never forget his impossible fortune.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr.....you are all so lovely with your messages and comments i really cant thank you enough....see u soon hope you are all safe and healthy


	27. twenty-seven

The good days come with the bad, which Bucky supposes makes him and Steve like every single other person on the planet. It’s just that, he thinks, his bad days are worse, racketed up to extremes in how hard they are.

Bucky is aware of how good his bad days are, relative to the past and the rest of the world. He has no job he has to slouch to when he doesn’t feel like it, he can order food if he wants or lie down on his comfortable couch and sleep. No one ever hits him or yells at him or tells him to shut up and take it, he is never starving or unclean, he never has to stand in a grimy one stall bathroom, crying until he can’t breathe and trying to tell himself it’s okay in order to make himself go out and get fucked by men he hates.

But still. He has had enough therapy and been reminded enough by Steve to know that just because he is obscenely, unspeakably lucky, there will still be bad days and he isn’t being selfish by accepting them.

He can handle that, mostly by burying himself against Steve for a while and baking until their kitchen is frosted in a thin layer of flour and talking to Jennifer until he doesn’t quite feel like his insides have turned to rattlesnakes. It is worse when they stretch themselves out into days or a week.

Sometimes it comes upon him slowly, like the crescendo to an illness. He can tell when it’s coming if it just comes on because he gets cold, abruptly and irrationally, even if it’s the summer or if Steve turns their heat up to the point of discomfort for him. He doesn’t know why, really. Sometimes his brain shivers and stalls out and won’t recalibrate for forty-eight, seventy-two, ninety-six hours. Jennifer says it’s because he’s still very much in the process of recovering, his body flushing out years and years of suffering and abuse. There will be times, she says, that he will be overwhelmed with negative feelings. It’s normal, it doesn’t mean he is failing, somehow, at recovering or at general personhood.

Sometimes, though, it’s triggered by something that throws in into brittle, unshakeable misery that won’t leave. Someone passing him on the street, shouting up the block to their friend, “Alexander!” A belt of Steve’s left lying on the couch suddenly springing forth a slew of awful sensations that make his knees buckle. A long, cold look thrown unmistakably at him from across a subway car.

This one is no different, just a moment, something pathetic and insignificant to the rest of the world. He and Steve are in Chelsea after having been at the Whitney for an exhibit Steve wanted to see. It has been a good day. They’re drinking smoothies and holding hands on their way back to the subway, and they swing around a corner and Bucky is suddenly confronted by Alexander’s bank, even though it isn’t really anymore, it always is, its harsh silver lettering against sleek black, sudden and intimidating. 

Bucky stops, suddenly floored by panic, as if the ground has been yanked out from under him and he is falling towards somewhere very cold. Steve stops a few moments later, realizing, his face and stature going soft.

It’s not the first time. They are all over New York, even though several branches have closed since the trial, and Bucky has a general map in his head of where they are so he can duck around them, but he hasn’t been here in so long or maybe it’s new and it doesn’t matter because the insane terror it strikes in him is quick and brutal.

“S’okay, baby,” Steve says quietly, cupping Bucky’s face, tilting his chin up a little. “It’s alright, you’re alright. He’s not here, yeah?”

Bucky nods and squeezes his eyes shut. He feels nauseous. 

“C’mon.” Steve guides him gently past it, putting himself between it and Bucky. Bucky looks down. “You’re doing so good, love, there you go. You’re so brave, Buck.”

Bucky swallows hard, shaking his head. “It’s so stupid,” he spits out, “I know it’s not—I know he’s not here, b-but—”

“It’s not stupid, baby,” Steve tells him. They’re past it now, but Bucky, instinctually, looks back as though Pierce has darted out of there and followed them, and he knows it isn’t possible, knows he’s being insane, but his hands have gone numb anyway.

“It’s okay,” Steve says again, so softly. The way he is moving and speaking has somehow managed to keep Bucky walking, the rhythmic, unbreaking steps he’s taking. They’re two blocks past it. Alexander isn’t coming after him.

But he is shaky for the rest of the way home, even though Steve keeps his arm laid over Bucky’s shoulders and kisses his forehead every few minutes. They order in and Bucky falls asleep on top of Steve on the couch until Steve coaxes him up into bed, where he promptly falls asleep on top of Steve there.

Steve, one hand occupied rubbing Bucky’s back as he sleeps, reads a few pages of a novel he started last week, texts Natasha that he misses her and they should get coffee this week, and strains to switch the light off. Bucky sleeps cuddled up to him in some form every night, but most of his weight is rested on Steve’s chest, a little too warm but comfortably so, like when you’ve been sitting for a few minutes too long in front of a fireplace. Steve smiles in the dark, shifts so that he can wrap his free arm around Bucky, and falls asleep within ten minutes.

Bucky jerking doesn’t wake him up. It’s Penny, accidentally rutting him while she coaxes Bucky out of a nightmare, that throws Steve from sleep. He blinks through disorientation for a few moments until he realizes what’s going on and he sits up.

“Buck,” he says, hand gentle and bracing on Bucky’s shoulder while he twitches, face distraught. “Baby, it’s Steve, wake up, you’re having a bad dream.” Bucky jerks a few more time until his eyes spring open, wild and white in the dark, not relaxing when his eyes land on Steve. Steve waits, very calm and still, for Bucky to look around, blinking, then ease back a bit. He presses his hands over his face and shivers, still crying so hard he’s struggling to talk. Tentatively, Steve rubs his back and whispers, “It’s alright, love, it’s okay, you’re okay, take your time, baby.” He leans, collapsed, into Steve.

“Steve,” he croaks out, voice hoarse and burnt through with tears. “Steve, he’s—he’s here, he’s—” Bucky breaks off into panicked crying again.

“Sh, Buck, you’re okay, no one is here, babe. No one’s gonna hurt you, baby, we’re home, it’s just me here.” Bucky blinks up at him, his eyes clouded with panic. “You want Penny to scan the house, baby?” Steve asks him softly. Shakily, Bucky nods. Steve tells her to go clear the rooms and she trots off importantly.

Steve flicks the light on, moving slowly. Bucky presses himself closer against Steve’s chest, his body feeling very small, and Steve strokes his hair while he breathes, sobs subsiding into tired whimpers. He sits up after some time, face streaked with tears.

“Wanna talk about it, baby?” Bucky buries himself back into Steve’s side, face hot against his neck.

“Was just bad,” he whispers, a sob catching itself in his throat. “Scary.” He feels seized by paranoia, too terrified to really move. “Steve,” he whimpers.

“I’m here, baby.” Steve draws him closer and kisses his forehead. “I’ve got you, Buck.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything else, but he clings to Steve as Steve rubs his back. Penny nudges the door open and settles back down again, the house determined to be safe, which seems to relax Bucky a good bit more.

“Can we keep the light on?” Bucky asks timidly.

“Mhm,” Steve says, and even though Bucky falls asleep first, when he wakes up the next morning the lamp is still lit on Steve’s side.

***

Sometimes Bucky thinks, when he is in the midst of a bad spell, the world twists itself into certain miserable scenarios as punishment to him for being weak, for not being able to pull himself out of it. According to Jennifer, it’s probably not true, but whether it is or not is beside the point, because when he’s feeling impossibly bad, everything else is difficult in and of itself, because he is traumatized and his brain is still in tatters from that (his words, not hers) and when he is vulnerable, everything else feels worse.

But still. It fucking feels that way.

“Hey,” Steve says, a few days later, “we’ve got Clint’s thing tomorrow night.” They’re on the couch, Bucky buried in Steve’s side, Penny breathing heavily at their feet.

“Oh,” Bucky says. “Shit. I forgot.”

Steve, quickly, says, “If you aren’t feeling up to it, you don’t have to go.”

Bucky bites his lip. These parties are never his favorite, but the fact is that he has skipped them several times and he doesn’t want to always be abandoning Steve and he doesn’t want Steve’s acquaintances to think of him as never appearing. He sighs.

“No,” Bucky says, “it’s fine, I’ll go.”

“You sure?” Steve presses, squeezing his hands, but when Bucky nods, he looks visibly relieved. These are never Steve’s favorite, either. “We only have to go for like an hour, tops.”

“Sure,” Bucky says. Then he hugs Steve so that he hoists himself into his lap, Steve falling back a bit to catch him and kiss his cheek, and Bucky giggles, some of the anxiety lifting.

***

The party is in Clint’s Upper East Side apartment, a pointless event he throws every year that he says is to celebrate all of his client’s achievements but that really feels like an excuse to boast his beautiful house and family. Steve and Bucky loiter a bit, making boring conversation with other artists Steve knows vaguely and getting harassed by Clint for turning down a commission Steve hadn’t wanted with a giant paycheck.

“Thank god you’re here,” Steve tells Bucky, rolling his eyes when Clint walks off exasperatedly. “He likes you way more than me, that would’ve been endless if I was alone.”

Bucky laughs. “You’re welcome,” he says. They’re staring aimlessly at the buffet table, debating whether or not to eat more brie. Bucky feels Steve straighten, very suddenly. When Bucky looks up, they’re face to face with a guy their age, blinking in surprise.

“Steve?” The guy says.

Steve clears his throat. “Gabe.”

Bucky swallows hard. He knows very little about Gabe. Once, all the way back in the beginning, he had asked Steve, very overly nonchalant, if he was dating anyone. They were in the kitchen of the penthouse and Steve was making a grocery list and Bucky, sitting across from him feeling wildly out of place, came out with it. Mornings, back then, were the easiest time for Bucky to be, the time he could get himself to talk to Steve, unintimidating in his sweats and bedhead, bottomless mug of rich coffee between them, the day still spooling out in front of him in a hundred vague possibilities, the buttery morning light softening the edges of the world enough that he could pretend this was really his life and not a fantasy Steve was allowing him to live in for a while.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Bucky asked, blurting it out before he lost the nerve.. Steve had just bit into a piece of toast, which he then choked on. “Or girlfriend,” Bucky added, as an afterthought.

“Um,” Steve said, “no, I don’t.” The vigor with which he shook his head flooded Bucky with disgusting relief.

“But—but has there been anyone?” Bucky pressed him, unsure why, like moving your hand closer in on a flame and seeing how long it took to get burnt. 

Steve gave him a weary look. “Um. Not really.”

“Steve,” Bucky said, tracing his finger over a scratch in the marble countertop. “It’s fine.”

“I know, I know, I mean—um—I don’t know. A couple of people. Not—not anything serious.” Bucky raised his eyebrows, pushing on the prickle of discomfort, waiting for the pain to erupt. Steve scratched his neck. “I went out with this guy named Gabe for a few weeks,” he added, maybe to appease Bucky.

 _Gabe_ , Bucky thought, and felt suddenly like every nerve had gone up in flames, vision dark with loathing. “Gabe,” he repeated, rolling the name over like some unsavory bite of food he was trying not to taste. “He sounds nice.”

Steve gave him the faintest smirk. “Does he?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “Was he?”

Steve looked down then, retracing the word ‘mozzarella’ on his list, the letters dark and fat. “Yeah,” he said, “he was really nice.”

Bucky nodded. “So what happened to Gabe?”

When Steve looked up, he was relaxed again. “Just didn’t work out,” he said, after a moment of hesitation.

“And it was just Gabe?” Bucky said, trying to play it off like he was teasing even though the words caught in his throat. “Nobody else?”

“I—not really.” Bucky’s mug of coffee had left a dark rim on the countertop. He flinched and covered it, not wanting Steve to know and be angry with him. “I was, um. A pretty bad boyfriend, I think.”

“I beg to differ,” Bucky said, before he could think. Steve blushed, which was not an easy feat, and Bucky cleared his throat and looked away.

Gabe is tall and extremely handsome, tall, muscled body softened by the obviousness that he’s an artist, slightly ugly patterned shirt that he is pulling off and wispy dark goatee. He smiles at both of them, a little stiffly.

“I didn’t—I didn’t know Clint represented you, too,” Steve said vaguely.

“Oh,” Gabe said, “uh, he represents my boyfriend. He’s a cartoonist.”

“Oh,” Steve said, relaxing a bit. “Nice. Great. He’s, uh, he’s good. Clint. I’m—I’m sure you’re boyfriend’s good, too.” Gabe smiles politely, clearly regretting having come over here. “This is my boyfriend, Bucky,” Steve adds a moment later, squeezing Bucky gently where his hand is resting on his waist.

“Hi,” Bucky says self consciously. Gabe shakes his hand and glances between them.

“Nice meeting you,” he says. “Well, um. I should probably…” He gestures vaguely to the room. Steve nods. “Take care, you guys. Nice to see you, Steve.”

“You, too,” Steve says weakly. Then it’s over, anticlimactic and undramatic, nothing significant in the conversation, not even any coldness from Gabe. Regardless, Bucky is suddenly dizzy and too hot, like he’s stood up too fast. He feels suddenly and excruciatingly aware of all of the things that are wrong with him, and the party is too loud, every individual noise amplified unbearably.

He can feel Steve looking at him, so he tilts his head enough to meet his gaze. Steve smiles, a little sheepishly, and gives Bucky another squeeze.

“Baby?” he says, when all Bucky can return is a weak smile. “Ready to go?”

Bucky blinks. “We don’t have to go,” he says, a moment too late.

Steve smiles easily. “I’ve had enough. I’m ready for a bowl of cereal and sleep.”

“You really don’t have to do this, Steve,” Bucky says quietly. “It’s fine, I’m fine—”

“I know, me too. I don’t need to stay either, though. Promise.” Too tired to argue, especially when he doesn’t want to, Bucky nods and lets Steve guide them out, waving to Clint and his wife, Laura, and retrieve their coats before stepping out into the hallway and summoning the elevator. Outside, it’s raining, heavy and unpleasant, and the subway is a ten minute walk so Steve pulls out his phone to call an Uber. Bucky props himself against the building, beside him and scratches Penny’s head.

“Hey,” Steve says, looking up from his phone, “that didn’t bother you, did it?”

The street is very quiet. A taxi tears past them, headlights smeared into paint strokes on the wet pavement. The only illumination is from the pale gray lobby through the glass, leaving them in an icy white cube of light.

“No,” Bucky says. “Of course not.”

Steve gives him a long, studying look. “You sure? It’s okay if you did?” Their car pulls up; they hurry towards it, hair damp even in the thirty seconds of exposure. “We can talk about it,” Steve adds, raising his voice over the rain. Bucky grimaces at the chill and the darkness as Steve yanks the door open. Inside, they both slump back in relief, smiling at the driver and then looking at one another.

“Maybe when we get home,” Bucky says softly.

Steve nods, smiles, and kisses Bucky’s forehead. “Yeah, of course.”

Steve keeps his arm over Bucky’s shoulder for the whole drive, hand moving in small, endless circles over his shoulder, which is nice. They’re quiet; Bucky feels suddenly drained of his ability to make conversation. 

It’s kind of a long drive home, but Bucky blinks and realizes they’re pulling up their block. They thank the driver and step out, hurrying up the stairs in the rain, slumping in relief in their warm, dry house.

They stand in their mudroom and laugh at one another despite themselves. Bucky reaches up to brush water from Steve’s hair, and Steve fake scowls just as Penny shakes herself off on both of them and they start to laugh again.

“Fuck,” Steve says, throwing his jacket over a peg on the hook. “I’m gonna take a shower, wanna join me?”

Something involuntary in Bucky flinches. “Go ahead,” he says, with forced nonchalance. “I’ll go after.”

“You sure? You can go first.”

He squeezes Steve’s shoulder. “It’s okay.”

“Alright.” Steve kisses his cheek before vanishing upstairs.

While Steve showers, Bucky loses his coat and shoes and replays their three-minute interaction with Gabe for missing, important details. He sits on the couch for a few minutes, rubbing Penny’s ears and telling himself he’s being stupid and irrational, that Steve loves him and Gabe is a footnote in the part of his and Steve’s life that shouldn’t have happened. He’s starving, he realizes, the catered food long in the past and not enough to tie him over. He heads into the kitchen. He baked some bread yesterday, and it’s wrapped in foil, so he slowly peels it back and reaches for a serrated knife.

Steve strides in maybe thirty seconds later, comfortable as ever, and kisses the back of Bucky’s head before he fills a cup of water. “Want me to turn the water on?”

“Not yet,” Bucky says softly. He opens the fridge and scans for butter. He can feel Steve’s concern from six feet away, and he bites his lip.

“Hey,” Steve says, very gently. “Talk to me, love.”

“Talk to Gabe instead,” Bucky says hotly.

He is not mad at Steve, Steve has done absolutely nothing to warrant being snapped at, but he says it anyway. It’s not quite hostile, but Steve steps back, startled. 

“Buck, I talked to him for three minutes.” He gives him a tiny smile, almost a smirk. “You have nothing to be jealous of, I promise.”

Bucky goes back to slicing the bread, more pieces than he needs at this point. “Do you wish you’d stayed with him?”

Steve snorts. “Yeah. He’s the one that got away.” Bucky doesn’t answer. He’d half been serious, half provoking Steve into admitting Bucky’s failures.

“Bucky,” Steve says, “Buck, look at me.” He does, only for a moment. “Bucky,” Steve says again. “If you wanna talk about it, we can. But there’s—you have nothing to worry about.” He sounds almost amused, which Bucky isn’t sure should make him feel worse or better. He bites his lip and keeps cutting.

“He seemed interested,” Bucky says, even though he hadn’t.

“He was there with his boyfriend, Buck.”

Bucky looks up. “Everyone is interested, Steve, fucking look at you.” He’s talking too fast and his hands move too quickly and suddenly, pain bursts in his hand and he looks down, surprised to see he’s sliced his finger open and crimson is unspooling itself down his hand. “God, fuck.”

“Oh, fuck, baby, you alright?” Bucky nods, breathless from the shot of adrenaline and pain. He squeezes his free hand around it and winces.

“Fine,” he bites out, but even as he’s trying to stop the bleeding, blood snakes slowly down his palm. He grits his teeth.

“Let me see it,” Steve says. Begrudgingly, Bucky uncurls his fingers. His prosthetic palm is the color of cherries. “Buck, you sure that doesn’t need stitches?”

“Jesus, Steve. No, it doesn’t need stitches. Just let me get a bandaid.” He wrenches his wrist away from Steve, leaving little dew droplets of blood on the counter. Faint from the pain and the alarm, his hand shakes when he reaches the bathroom and has to push on tiptoes for the bandages. Steve, quietly, has followed him, and stands beside him, touching his shoulder.

“Buck,” Steve says gently, “let me.”

Exhausted, Bucky relents and hands it over. He lifts his hand and Steve wraps the bandage around tight enough that Bucky’s finger pulses hotly, and he shuts his eyes.

“How’s that feel?” Steve asks.

“Fine,” Bucky says quietly. Steve raises his eyebrows, and Bucky adds, “Fine, really. Thank you.”

Steve, giving him a small smile, raises Bucky’s hand enough to kiss the bandage. “Sorry,” Bucky adds, a whisper.

Steve smooths a hand over Bucky’s hair. “I love you,” he says, “I love you more than anything on Earth. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Bucky says, and he does. “I just—there are all these people that are hot and impressive and cool and successful that you could be with if you wanted and I don’t… I feel like you’re gonna see him and remember how good it was to be with someone who isn’t… all of this, and I… I don’t know. You could have anyone you wanted.”

“I have the only person I want,” Steve says.

“I—” Bucky begins, voice high and wrecked. “I’m so scared that one day you’re gonna wake up, and think about all of the things you gave up because of me, and you’re gonna hate me for that.”

Steve exhales, pained. “How can I convince you that that isn’t going to happen?” 

“I don’t know,” Bucky whispers. “It’s not—it’s not like you’re the one making me think that.” Steve sighs, moving his thumb over Bucky’s fingers. “You never talk about him,” Bucky says quietly.

“Well,” Steve says, “I never really think about him, either.” Bucky shifts, uncomfortable. “I’ll tell you whatever you wanna know.”

Bucky bites his lip. “How long did you guys go out?”

“A month,” Steve says. “We met at a gallery and went to dinner a few times.”

“Were you in love with him?” Bucky whispers.

“No,” Steve says, with such certainty Bucky believes him right away.

“Did you have sex with him?” He knows the answer already. He doesn’t know why he asks. His brain is constantly trying to find subtle punishments in every conversation.

Steve rakes a hand through his hair. “Yeah.” Bucky nods. 

“Do you—” Bucky begins, then stops, reconsidering if he is going to be selfish or not, then clears his throat. “Do you want to have sex with other people?”

Steve looks stunned by the question. “No,” he says, “Bucky, no. Of course not.”

“‘Cause—‘cause you can,” Bucky says, “I don’t—I know you’ve given that up for me and I don’t wanna make you—if that’s something that would—would make you happy—”

“Bucky,” Steve says, very quietly. “Being with you is what makes me happy. I don’t want to have sex with anyone else. Ever.”

“You know how long it’s taking,” Bucky whispers, voice breaking. Everything, he thinks, returns to this, his inability to let go of the conviction that this is what he’s good for and his inability to give that to Steve anyway, this horrible, physical space that sex takes up in his body and his head and his relationship and his life, this third party that is constantly present when he is with Steve. He shoves his hands into his pockets.

“I can wait,” Steve says simply. “It isn’t something I think about like that, Buck. I just wanna be with you, wherever we are, okay?”

Bucky lifts his anxious gaze for a beat, and then nods, feeling like he could unspool from the relief of it. Being treated by Steve like he is enough is always so much for him, makes him feel like he has evaded some apocalyptic disaster. Bucky shifts forward, unsure if he can touch Steve yet, but Steve wraps his arms around Bucky and Bucky allows himself to be swept up in the touch.

Steve holds him, letting Bucky tuck his head underneath Steve’s chin, body snuggled tight enough against Steve’s chest that he can feel Steve’s heartbeat against his own collarbone, soft and stubborn. “I don’t like to think about you doing this with Gabe,” Bucky whispers, not quite jealous, not quite bitter, just suddenly flooded with longing for all the time he missed with Steve. He winces immediately, waiting for the obvious reply to that that Steve surely doesn’t miss, but Steve doesn’t bring it forward because he will never use that against Bucky because he is better than anyone was ever supposed to be.

Steve kisses the top of his head. “I never did this with anyone else.”

Bucky sighs against Steve’s shirt.

“You’re it for me, Buck,” Steve adds. “You always have been.“

Bucky does wake up that night, gasping and having sweat through his tee shirt, and Steve is there to hold him while he shivers and cries, patient and gentle as he always is. “I’m sorry,” Bucky whimpers, an apology for all he is and isn’t, for the fact that if Steve were with anyone else, he’d be sound asleep right now, and Steve kisses his ear and whispers, “Don’t be sorry, angel.”

***

He has therapy the next day, which is an enormous relief. Jennifer breaks down the seemingly endless negative emotions of the last few days ago and gets him to rationalize the anxiety (Steve loves him, there is nothing at all besides his panic telling him Steve wants to leave him) and reminds him that the increased nightmares and panic are a result of a couple of stressful events over the last week or so, but it doesn’t make him weak or a failure. She reminds him to acknowledge whichever rush of emotions comes over him, to say to himself, ‘I am experiencing terror, or anger, or self hate, but this emotion is going to pass, and this is why it’s happening, and this is what’s happening in reality.’

“I have something I want you to try,” Jennifer tells Bucky towards the end. “One of my friends who’s a psychologist was telling me about it the other day, and I think it could be helpful for you.”

Penny nuzzles at Bucky’s hand; he scratches her. “Okay.”

“I think you should go to this class that I was speaking to her about.” Bucky raises his eyebrows. “It’s a nine week yoga course for survivors.”

“I don’t do yoga,” Bucky says right away.

“It’s for beginners,” she adds, smiling. “I think that it might be helpful with some of the ways you’ve talked about struggling with feeling like you have a lack of autonomy over your body.” Bucky swallows, mouth dry. “It might not be for you, which is fine. But I think you should give it a try.”

***

“How was therapy?” Steve asks later.

“Um,” Bucky says, “pretty good.” They’re cooking dinner; Bucky reaches behind Steve for the pepper shaker and tips it over their soup. “Uh. Jennifer thinks I should go to this yoga class for, um” —He chews on the word— “survivors.”

“Yeah?” Steve glances up. “You gonna?”

Bucky shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll see it.” Bucky lifts the spoon and tastes the lentils, then frowns and offers it to Steve. “More salt?”

“A little.” Bucky smiles and adds it. “I didn’t know you were interested in yoga.”

“Um. I’m not really. Or I’ve never really tried it, but. I don’t know. She said she’s friends with the woman running it.”

“It sounds like a great idea,” Steve says, squeezing Bucky’s shoulder as he slips past him to reach for bowls. “When is it?”

“It starts next week.” He frowns, anxiety snaking through his stomach. “I, um, I don’t know.”

“What?” Steve pushes gently. He wraps his arms around Bucky from behind, enveloping him and kissing his cheek.

“I feel… I feel like I shouldn’t be showing up to a group anything for survivors. It’s not—it’s not the same.”

He feels Steve’s chest fall with a sigh. “Buck,” he says softly. “Did you tell her that?”

Bucky nods, cheeks hot.

“What’d she say?”

“Um. Stuff she’s told me before. That I—there isn’t a way to have been a victim, and, um, I think that because they told me that ‘cause they wanted me to believe I deserved it.” He exhales.

“Can you believe that?” Steve asks him, very quietly.

“Um. Kind of. When it’s her, yeah. It’s hard to just… always think it.” He pauses. “What if… what if I go and people know who I am from the news?”

Steve kisses his shoulder. “Then they will think you’re unbelievably brave for what you did.”

Bucky sighs. “She thinks that if I go, it’ll help me see that no one is, um, looking at me thinking I got what I deserved.” The words come out as barely a whisper.

“I think she’s probably right,” Steve answers. Bucky breaks out of Steve’s arms to turn and look at him.

“Can I ask you something?” Bucky says quietly. Steve nods. Bucky purses his lips, considering. “How are you not… a little bit resentful of how many guys I’ve let fuck me?”

Steve winces. “Buck, you were a kid. You were trying to _survive._ How could I ever—”

“But I still did it,” Bucky whispers. “I’m still always gonna—gonna have slept with all those guys, even if I didn’t want to.”

Steve looks so sad. “It doesn’t make you any less good, Buck. It’s something that happened to you, and you got through it. I slept with other people too.”

“It’s not the same,” Bucky says shortly. “I just—I had some responsibility in what happened, and how could—how could these people who survived being raped or abused not be a little bit angry that I’m taking up space in their group?”

“You were trying to survive,” Steve repeats. “Terrible things happened to you, and you made it out, and you’re doing so, so good. _You_ survived these things. No one decent could ever see you in any other light.”

Bucky bites his lip. “Maybe you see that. But, um, you love me a lot, and most people don’t have seventeen years of history with me, so.”

“Maybe,” Steve says, “but I can think of a lot of people in your life who haven’t known you for seventeen years who think you’re the bravest person ever.”

***

He goes to the yoga class. What the hell.

It’s in Carroll Gardens. The room is big and open, tall windows, sun softened by light orange curtains. There are a few people inside already, stretched out on yoga mats, enough space that he won’t have to worry about brushing against anyone.

What he hadn’t said to Steve is that, even beyond the slight conviction that he is infiltrating a space he isn’t welcome in, he constantly thinks of himself as unwanted everywhere. He is insecure about his appearance and his voice and his presence, and the belief that his existence is an inconvenience to every stranger who sees him and every space he occupies is one of extreme anxiety that he is still working on breaking out of. 

The instructor, young and pretty and warm looking, introduces herself to him as Christina. She tells him she’s glad he’s here.

“Um,” Bucky says, “hi.” She smiles warmly enough that his heart rate skitters to a slow. “Is it—is it alright if my dog stays? She’s a service dog, so, um, I’m allowed to have her—”

“Absolutely,” Christina says, “I have some dog treats in my bag if she’d like, one of my other students is bringing her dog.” Bucky nods and smiles, weak with relief.

She gives Penny a biscuit, and then he sets up in his own space. Immediately, the anxiety has tapered to nothing more than its usual dull thrum in his chest.

Then she starts and every instruction for a stretch or a pose or what to think about is interwoven with, “at _your_ pace, whenever _you’re_ comfortable with it, take a deep breath and feel allow yourself to feel where your body is,” and when it’s done Bucky realizes for the hour, the thrum subsided to almost nothing at all.

***

“How was it?” Steve asks later, immediately after kissing him despite protests that he’s sticky and hot. They’re standing in the kitchen; Steve has started cooking dinner.

“It…” Bucky says later, and sounds unsure. “There were times she said stuff that felt a little kitschy. But, um. It was—I get why people, um, like me like being in this… space where you’re directly being reminded that—that everything you do is your choice, and the ways you’re using your body are very much, like, in service of feeling grounded. I liked that.”

Steve kisses the top of his head. “You gonna do another one?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says softly, “yeah, I think so.”

“That’s great, baby,” Steve says, “that’s so so good.” He stops stirring the pasta to lay an arm over Bucky’s shoulder and draw him in to kiss his cheek. “I’m proud of you.”

The resistance to brush it off rises and falls, and Bucky whispers, “Thanks.” Steve smiles, kisses him one more time.

***

Three weeks pass. They are in bed early; Steve has just rubbed the lotion into Bucky’s back, a ritual that has gotten less painful for Bucky as time has passed. Steve’s scrolling through Twitter and Bucky has just vanished to brush his teeth, and when he returns, he kneels on the bed and bounces a bit.

“Hey,” Bucky says, a little nervously.

Steve turns to him, setting his phone aside. “Yeah?”

“This might, um, be a stupid idea, but I—I was thinking about taking a writing course? There—There are a bunch, and they aren’t that expensive, and, um, yeah.” He rings his hands a little in his lap, self conscious. Steve reaches over and squeezes them.

“I think that’s amazing, Buck,” Steve tells him, smiling. “Seriously. I think that’s so, so great.”

Bucky looks up, half-smiling. “Yeah?”

Steve nods. “I mean, unfair to everyone else in your class, but yeah.” 

Bucky blushes and rolls his eyes. “I just—this yoga thing, it feels good to have something that’s like, a routine and it’s something I feel like I’m getting something out of and I’m a kid of working towards something, you know? And, um, it might be dumb, but, I don’t know.”

Steve thumbs across his knuckles. “It’s not dumb,” he says firmly. “Do you have an idea where?”

Bucky shrugs. “I mean, there are a lot. I don’t know—I don’t know if I should apply for one, or just do one that I don’t have to apply for, um, probably that.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “I mean, obviously, whatever feels best to you. But, like, you’d get into anything.” He genuinely thinks that’s true. Bucky may be the love of his life, but he is also obviously and objectively an almost obscenely good writer.

Bucky bites his lip against smiling. “Mhm, well. The people deciding that aren’t dating me.”

“Presumably, they can read,” Steve replies. Bucky snorts and leans against him, head nestled in his shoulder.

Bucky is still pursing his lips nervously, hopefully. Steve smiles. “What?”

“I just—would you want to do something with me?”

“Do something?” Steve says. “A class?”

“Yeah.” Bucky glances down, then up. “Like, um, I was looking at these—these pottery classes they have in the West Village—”

“You want to take a pottery class together?” Steve confirms, grinning. Bucky, blushing, flops down onto his pillow next to Steve.

“Or something. Only if you—if you wanted to.” He touches Steve’s arm. “It wouldn’t have to be pottery. Or anything, if you don’t want. But I thought it might be fun.” His gaze dips. “There are just—I feel like I—like I missed so many things, you know? And there are so many, like, fucking cool courses and stuff that are pretty easy to access, actually, and I—it just seems really fun. And I feel like it feels good to have something, you know? In addition to those classes I have with Wanda.” He breaks off, cheeks pink.

Steve leans over to kiss Bucky’s nose. Bucky giggles, sliding a little further down the pillow, fake pulling back, so Steve touches his cheek and they fall lazily into a kiss. He feels Bucky relax a bit, some of the endless tension he carries melting back.

“I,” Steve says, with a pause to kiss Bucky’s cheek, “would like nothing more than to take a pottery class with you.”

“Really?” Bucky says, delighted, running a hand through Steve’s hair.

“Mhm,” Steve says. “Unless you’re trying to fulfill some Patrick Swayze fantasy with an actual pottery wheel—”

“Steve!” Bucky chides, smacking his shoulder, but he’s laughing, so Steve pulls him into another kiss. Steve reaches for his hand above his head and squeezes it, and Bucky doesn’t flinch at the sensation of being slightly restrained by somebody over him. He giggles and lets Steve place a hand in the small of his back and guide his hips up a bit so Steve can kiss him more easily, enjoying the privilege of being touched and being safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im backkkk sorry updates are rocky with finals in zoom university but after like a week or 2 updating will be faster
> 
> also uh. idk how much longer this will be bc i kind of just. like writing them living their lives and recovering so like if you get tired of this by all means dont keep reading but i like writing this story a lot so i will b here a while more probably
> 
> cafelesbian on tumblr! stay healthy and safe and sane


	28. twenty-eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to henry for giving me deep sources of information for this chapter i love u

The thing is, Bucky does not particularly want to enroll in any kind of college, more for the fact that even the thought of crowds and focus on him and expectations from anyone in authority overwhelms him too much to even entertain. The reality is, he doesn’t have to. If he or Steve never worked another day in their lives, they would have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives and leave any future kids enough to do the same. It makes him, he knows, luckier than, with very few exceptions, every individual person his age. Natasha, Sam, and Wanda still look around his and Steve’s place with thinly veiled awe and something very close to envy. The way they live is worth resenting, their complete lack of worry about grocery money or rent, about student loans or job openings or hours logged at miserable nine-to-fives that leave them too exhausted to do anything they want. The realities and inconveniences Sam and Natasha’s lives—scholarship applications and recommendation letters and frustrating, dull assignments interfering with their social lives—are as meaningless and hard to picture for Bucky as it would have been for him to tell them about underground sex clubs and empty parking lots in the grim, colorless dome of the night and how to handle someone who refused to pay, not that Bucky was ever able to anyway. 

But Bucky has always just liked learning, even since he was in grade school being distracted by Steve passing him notes. And, like he’d explained to Steve, having something structured to throw his energy into feels good, shakes some of the uselessness that will occasionally settle over him when he thinks too hard about the fact that he is freeloading off of Steve with nothing to show in the way of money or contributions.

He has yoga, which, to Jennifer’s delight, has become an indescribably important hour in his week. She had been right about it, the relief of a space and activity that is so fully, exclusively focused on giving safety to people for whom safety has not felt possible in so long. He leaves feeling lighter and cleaner, always. He is told to acknowledge himself, to be conscious of his body and his space and the swell of his breath in his chest, and in that, he is able, more and more easily, to be okay with his occupation of air.

He sometimes still feels like a hologram, like he is flickering, the lines of his body and his consciousness not quite the same, like if he looked in the mirror he would see double. Sometimes, still, his body feels like a series of used, trashed parts; not always, but sometimes, after nightmares, after flashbacks, like his body is used and disgusting and diseased. This helps with that. As much as therapy has given him the mental strategies to fight those emotions when they arise, this has started to somehow solidify it, has given him a tangible space that, for ninety minutes a week, makes those feelings obsolete. He leaves feeling grounded and whole.

After the third class ends, Bucky looks up and there’s a girl about his age a few feet away, looking at him. He gives her a small smile and swallows, throat beginning to tighten.

“You’re really brave,” she says to him.

Bucky thinks his cheeks flush. It is one thing to be told that from Steve, it is something else entirely to hear it from a stranger.

“Thank you,” he whispers. She smiles shyly, tucks her mat into her bag, and walks briskly out.

When he tells Steve that evening, he tears up. Steve smiles, kisses his forehead, and says, “She’s right. I told you everyone knows that about you.”

In addition to yoga, now, he and Steve have pottery. They spend an hour one morning eating bagels and reading through a Time Out article conveniently titled “Best Pottery Classes in New York.” He had worried, slightly, that Steve would think it was stupid, but to his immense relief Steve is apparently thrilled with it. Steve, for all of his art genius, does not know anything about ceramics, and is genuinely excited about the class. They sign up for a beginner one in South Street Seaport, populated largely by middle aged couples and a few teenagers. Bucky gives Steve a faint, private smirk, and it is not anything particularly hilarious but Steve has to swallow to stop himself from laughing too hard anyway.

“You aren’t teaching the class?” One woman says to Steve, with a slight smile. 

Steve smiles back, humoring her. “Ceramics aren’t my forte,” he replies. Next to him, Bucky is bouncing his leg very slightly; he is always a little alarmed at any kind of recognition. Steve lays a hand lightly on his lower back and circles his thumb.

Mercifully, though, they get very little attention otherwise. They are handed a shapeless lump of clay and given basics on where to start, which mainly means pinching and rolling until it starts to take a vague shape of a dome.

There’s just a lot that Steve feels, sitting beside Bucky in a classroom setting. The slight cock of his head that means he’s paying attention, the polite laugh when a joke in the classroom falls flat, the way he touches his chin when he is thinking about something, leaving a faint dusting of clay over his jaw that Steve reaches over brush off. It’s hardly academic, a room full of adults sitting around an older guy who absolutely had been a hippie and couldn’t be more excited to be teaching pottery, learning how to pinch and coil clay.

He doesn’t, in fact, make any insensitive comments about Penny. He does, though, while walking around correcting everyone’s little bowls, stop in front of Steve and say, “I gotta say, I’m a little intimidated to be teaching an art class to you.”

Bucky laughs. Steve grins and says, “Don’t worry, I’m only good at painting and drawing,” then wonders if that had come out more cocky than he had meant it. 

“We’ll see about that.” He taps lightly next to Steve’s clay and tells him, “Don’t press so hard.” Steve eases up, leaving faint, indented fingerprints. Cliff glances at Bucky’s. “Nice job,” he says, and walks off.

Steve looks over at Bucky’s to find his bowl perfectly layered, even, thin coils laid easily on top of each other. “You’re so annoying.”

“Maybe visual arts aren’t for you,” Bucky deadpans, nodding to his lopsided bowl. Steve flips him off.

When they are finished, hands chalky with clay residue that the sink didn’t quite get with two tiny bowls to pick up next week, the city is briefly golden with the the sunset, buildingtops shimmering, the sky the color of a clementine. Steve hugs Bucky clumsily to his side, kissing his cheek to make him laugh. “That was so fun.”

“Yeah,” Bucky giggles. “Wanna get dinner over here? There’s that taco place on the water.”

“Of course,” Steve says, grinning. 

So they get tacos and sodas and eat at a table outside, because it is warm enough. The pale, fading sun throws white glitter across the East River. Steve holds Bucky’s hand across the table and traces his thumb over pink nail polish, his hair pulled back but strands of it caught wildly in the breeze anyway, squinting a bit against the custard evening light. Steve is weak with adoration.

Afterwards, they take the ferry across the river to Red Hook, sitting on the top deck, windswept and warm. Bucky rests his head on Steve's shoulder, so Steve kisses his hair, smiling when Bucky nestles a little closer to him and presses a lazy kiss to Steve’s collarbone. He thinks, _I can’t believe how happy I am with this life._

***

He talks to Wanda about it, too. He’s sitting with her in the window of an overpriced café in Dumbo, where they had visited a flea market for furnishings for Wanda’s new apartment. She now has some new fruit bowls and a pretty woven tapestry tucked into the bag beside her.

She is his best friend and, besides Steve and Jennifer, the person he trusts most in this world. She has been taking design classes at Parsons recently, a development that she talks fast and elatedly about, her eyes bright and excited, hands moving through the air endearingly. If anyone will understand this particular intersection of desire and fear, it’s her.

“I kind of wanna take some classes,” he says, a little nervously,

“Amazing,” says Wanda. “Are we talking more cooking?” It’s been over a month since they finished their last one.

“No,” Bucky says. “I mean, yes, of course.” She laughs. “Obviously. But… but I also, um. I used to want to be a writer.” He’s talked very little about that with her. She knows he likes to write, but the majority of their friendship he had spent trying to eradicate any part of the first seventeen years of his life from his memory, and he never offered her much. Even now, the pieces of him that he had cut away are still growing back, the understanding that he is allowed to tend to the things that give him joy and make him human still not quite fully accepted. 

“That’s awesome,” Wanda says. “That’s great, babe. I’m proud of you.”

Bucky smiles. “Are you sure it isn’t a dumb idea?”

“Why would it be?”

“Just… I don’t know. ‘Cause I… I don’t know.”

The sun is slanted through the window directly onto their table. When Wanda moves her hands, her rings glitter. “Bucky,” she says. “You deserve to do what makes you happy. There’s nothing dumb about that.”

Bucky gives her a small smile, uncomfortable in the face of such warmth. “Thanks, Wanda.” She squeezes his hands, and he clears his throat. “Anyway, um. How have you been?”

She laughs. “I’m alright. I’m good.” Pausing to sip her coffee. “Sam’s good, we’ve been hanging out a lot.”

“Excellent,” Bucky says, and she laughs again. Then she glances down to check her nails.

“I actually got a therapist,” Wanda says.

Bucky sits up. “Really?” 

She smiles, self conscious. “Yeah. I’ve gone three times now.”

“Wanda,” Bucky says, reaching across the table again for her hand, “that’s so good.” She smiles with a little eye roll. “Is it helpful? Are they good?”

“Um,” she begins. “She’s great, yeah, she’s easy to talk to. I, um, helping? I don’t know, it’s only been a little bit. And I mean, um. I’m pretty happy with my life right now. But I did burst into tears immediately after my first session with her, so.”

“Oh, of course,” Bucky says. She bursts out laugh.

“Anyway. She says I, um, have a lot of unprocessed grief, which is probably true. I talk about my parents a lot. And, um, being in foster places. And being eighteen working at a strip club.” She exhales. Outside, the sun has clouded over, leaving them in soft grey light. “But anyway. I think it’s good.”

“That’s really good, Wanda,” Bucky says quietly. “I love you. I’m proud of you.” She squeezes his hand. “What made you decide to go?”

She thinks about this. “I don’t know. Everything, I guess. I mean, you and Steve are kind of an advertisement for therapy being good” —Bucky laughs— “and Sam’s probably the most stable person I’ve ever met and he’s got a therapist, and he’ll also be one eventually, which seemed like a good reason I should check it out. And, um, it’s funny, it’s like, you start to talk about these things and you don’t even realize how much they still affect you, you know?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Yeah, I do.”

So he does sign up for a fiction writing class, which ends up being one of the best decisions of his life.

New York is full of colleges that offer classes without technically needing to be a student there, on top of classes separate from any school. Poring over lists of top tens and pros and cons of various programs overwhelms Bucky so much that he almost bails all together, but, with gentle motivation from Steve, he works up the nerve to select and enroll in one. It is an intro course at a community college in the city, easy enough to enroll in as a non-matriculated student, no advising or worrying over graduation requirements and a degree.

He selects the one he does because he knows the name of the professor from various short stories he has read and a popular novel that he has not.

“T’Challa Udaku,” he tells Steve, “we read a story of his in English in twelfth grade.”

“Babe,” Steve says, “I love you so much, but there’s no way I remember anything we read in twelfth grade English.”

“Well, it was good,” Bucky informs him, and Steve kisses his nose and replies, “I believe you and will absolutely read it again for you.”

Steve takes the subway in with him the first day for no reason other than he knows Bucky is anxious. This seems, all of a sudden, like a terrible fucking idea, like he is kidding himself in thiking this is something he deserves or is capable of.

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” he says anxiously. “Maybe this was a stupid idea, I don’t belong here, I—”

“Buck,” Steve says, very gently, and lays one hand on his cheek. “You got this, you’re the most talented person I know. You deserve to be here as much as everyone, alright?”

The class is held in a small, bright classroom in a building in midtown with one big window looking over Bryant Park. Bucky gets there early, anxiety telling him he will be late otherwise, and also because he wants to make sure there are no problems with Penny being there. When he arrives, the professor is there, answering emails alone.

Bucky knocks, nervous. The instructor looks up.

“Hello,” he says, and smiles. He’s maybe in his forties and extremely handsome, dark hair and strong jaw and warm face. A sharp gold necklace dangles against his chest. “I’m T’Challa.”

“Hi,” Bucky says, suddenly breathless with nerves. “Um. I’m Bucky. I’m a student.”

“Have a seat.” Nervous, Bucky perches himself towards the center of the table.

“I just, um, my dog—” He nods vaguely to Penny, feeling idiotic. “She’s a service dog, um, is that… okay?” He winces; legally, of course, it’s okay. He’s suddenly self conscious anyway.

“Of course.” Relief makes Bucky shudder. “What’s her name?”

“Penny,” Bucky says. Penny perks up at her name. 

“Happy to have you both, Bucky,” he says, and then another girl arrives and Bucky is spared the small talk.

***

Steve waits for him, even though he didn’t have to. He texts Bucky and asks if he wants to meet at a cafe two blocks away, and he is there when Bucky arrives, standing eagerly to hug him and kiss him on the cheek and ask him how it was.

“It was good,” Bucky says, “it was really good.” He grins despite himself.

“Yeah?” Steve squeezes both his hands, tentatively thrilled, and they slide into opposite sides of the booth. “Tell me!”

Bucky does talking quickly and excitedly, holding Steve’s hands over the table. It had been easy and comfortable, a good, warm group—he’d been irrationally anxious about being the oldest, but he’s on the younger side, it turns out—and it was straightforward, an overview of the class, some looking into a short story. As he talks, Steve watches him, grinning, eyes bright and soft, loving him so much he thinks it must be disruptive to everyone else in that small cafe, that love so big and bright and wild it bumps against tables and pushes out the air and gravity.

***

Three weeks pass. Bucky thinks it might be the happiest he’s been in five years. He goes to yoga classes and does pottery with Steve and writes and reads good stories for a class that shockingly, he feels in place in and he feels himself beginning to unthaw, parts of him that he’d thought long dead whirring alive again, something that could almost be confidence flickering in his chest at a compliment on short paragraphs in class, stillness where anxiety would usually be hammering. It is not always, but there are moments, and that is more than he has had in longer than he can remember.

Bucky is meant to turn in a short story in class, which is ready and which he thinks is fairly good, which means when he lets Steve read it he says, “Jesus _Christ_ , you’re good, Buck.” Bucky blushes and buries his face in Steve’s shoulder.

“This is so good, Buck,” Steve says again. “I—seriously, this is so, so good.” Bucky looks lit up, cheeks pink and full, and Steve has to lean in and kiss his nose. “You’re so crazily talented.”

“Alright,” Bucky says, embarrassed. “Well, it’s too long for the page count, so…”

“Fuck the page count,” Steve says. Bucky laughs. “I’m so proud of you, babe. This is awesome.”

Happy enough not to argue, Bucky kisses his cheek and settles against him.

So he does. It is talked over in class along with someone else’s work, and everyone is kinder than Bucky could ever have imagined, throwing him admiring looks and pointing out lines that they like, and even the notes given by T’Challa are said warmly enough that even Bucky can’t twist it into something bad about him. Bucky leaves feeling flushed with delight. It is not until the next class, two days later, that anything terrible starts to ferment in his head.

“Bucky,” T’Challa says to him in passing, heading into the classroom, “do you have a few minutes to hang back after class?”

Bucky is so surprised by the request that he doesn’t answer right away. Then, upon realizing he’s supposed to, he nods, feeling suddenly quite faint. Penny lays her head in his lap.

He is so thrown by the question that he is only vaguely aware of the class that happens for the next two hours, his mind occupied by the endless terrible reasons this could have been asked of him. The obvious and glaring one pulses like a raw, infected wound, and Bucky runs down the things he is going to say and wonders whether he will tell him he’s disgusting and appalling and should be ashamed of himself, or if he’ll just tell him he isn’t welcome here anymore and ask him to leave. He feels dizzy with anxiety and shame; his hand shakes under the table, and Penny licks it.

Bucky calls Steve during the break, stepping into an empty staircase to do so. Steve picks up on the second ring and asks if everything’s alright.

“I—yeah,” Bucky says, but his voice is high and pitchy, “I just, um. My instructor asked me to stay after.”

A very brief pause. “Oh,” Steve says, “did he say why?”

“No,” Bucky whispers. White noise whines vaguely in his eats.

“Buck,” Steve says, “I bet he’s gonna tell you how great you’re doing. Seriously, babe, it won’t be anything bad.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, although he’s highly unconvinced. “Okay, yeah. You’re right, I’m being dumb.”

“You aren’t being dumb,” Steve reminds him, so unflinchingly patient it makes Bucky want to cry. “Take a breath, baby. It won’t be anything bad.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. He kneels so Penny can nuzzle him. “Just, um, what if he… read an old article and he… knows what I did?” He winces.

“It’s not gonna be that, Buck,” Steve says, but even over the phone, Bucky knows he isn’t sure. “No one would do that.” _Right_ , Bucky thinks, every stranger who has approached him in the last year flashing through his head in rapid succession. “You want me to meet you afterwards?”

“No, that’s okay,” Bucky says, even though he does quite want that.

“You sure? I’m not doing anything, we can grab dinner—”

“It’s alright,” he says, “thanks, Stevie.” He takes a breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I gotta go.”

“Call me after, baby, okay?” Steve says. “I love you. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“I love you, too,” Bucky echoes quietly, and turns out of the staircase again. 

It is an easy, mindless, rest of class, notes on the two stories due today, neither of them very good. He’s quieter than usual, and Penny keeps her head in his lap, giving his hand a few reassuring licks that do calm him down for a while, but when the two and a half hours are over and everyone files out, his heart undoes itself in anxiety again.

His other fear, so absurd that he couldn’t even repeat it to Steve, lingers sickeningly. T’Challa, on all fronts, seems incredibly decent, but sometimes they do. He’s got a wife and a kid, but so did Pierce. Bucky has had so few men in his life who have been interested in him for anything other than sex, that an adult man asking him to stay in a room alone with him elicits nothing but the worst possible outcome.

 _Shut up,_ Bucky thinks, _don’t be a moron._ Then, _Penny is here, there are other people in this building, I can scream if I need to—_

T’Challa shuts the door, and Bucky takes a hard, near-panicky breath. Penny licks his hands, rutting against his side a bit until he scratches her ears.

“Can I get you some water?” T’Challa asks Bucky.

“No,” Bucky says sharply, paranoia skittering through his chest, and winces immediately. “No, thank you,” he adds softly. He half-expects T’Challa to push, but he doesn’t, and Bucky tells himself to stop being insane, he is not going to be roofied and assaulted in a public building. He swallows anyway. Penny puts herself between them.

T’Challa sits, so Bucky does, too. “It’s alright,” T’Challa says, “nothing’s wrong, I promise.”

“Okay,” Bucky says softly, still fraught with anxiety.

“This piece is fantastic,” T’Challa says. Bucky blinks, unsure he heard him right. “Have you written much before?”

“Um,” Bucky says, so floored that he has a hard time finding the words to answer. “Yeah, um—I do on my own, sometimes, and, um, I did in—in high school. I—thank you.”

T’Challa smiles. “I don’t ever do this to students, but it’s really remarkable.”

Bucky feels light headed. He grins. “I—thank you so much.”

“Would you ever consider submitting it to a magazine?”

Bucky’s brain goes white again. “What?”

“I think the edited piece will be more than publishable.” 

“You mean like—like a school lit magazine?” 

“Well,” he said, “yeah. I also meant Harpers, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review.”

Bucky sometimes forgets how starved he is for praise until he hears something like this and all of him feels warm and settled, like the arch of some beautiful high. The insinuation from a man in any position of authority over him that he is good at something other than blowjobs still sends him reeling. So being told by a person he respects that he is good at something he cares about satisfies some semi-pathetic craving to be good, to make himself worth the space he occupies in anyone’s life.

“Really?” Bucky manages, idiotically.

He smiles. “Yeah. Think about it. You’re a very, very strong writer.” Bucky bites his lip against smiling too absurdly, fails, then lifts his hand instinctively to cover his smile the way he used to do without even realizing it until Steve gently pointed it out. He makes himself stop and swallows, composing himself. 

“Thank you,” Bucky whispers for the fourth time, wishing he could say something else. 

T’Challa smiles. “You’re welcome. Do you think about writing as a possible career?”

Bucky’s heart ricochets in his head. “Um. I—I mean, um, maybe? I don’t—I, um—” _I don’t think I’m good enough_ seems like the wrong thing to say, and so does, _My boyfriend and I have enough money that I don’t really worry about that,_ so he says, “Yeah.” It occurs vaguely to him, with a cold swoop in his stomach, that the absence of questions about what he’d done after high school may very well be intentional.

“That’s great. Well, seriously, look over my comments, and make your revisions, and if you want to think about sending this to places, I’d be happy to help you.”

“That—that means a lot to me,” Bucky stammers. “Thank you.”

“Of course. The other thing—” He pauses slightly, taking a swig out of his water bottle. “Starting at the beginning of May, I’m teaching a course at the the Sackett Street Workshop. It’s more advanced. I’d love it if you’d take it.”

It takes Bucky a moment to manage, again, “Really?”

T’Challa smiles. “Really, yes.”

“But, um,” Bucky says, “I don’t—I mean, I know that requires a lot of, um, application and stuff, and, um, it’s gotten compared to MFAs and I don’t have um—a degree, or anything—”

“Well,” T’Challa says, “I have say over who takes my class, and I think you’ve proved yourself significantly, here.” 

“I’m, um.” Bucky chews over the words he wants to say for a few tense moments, then says, “Do you know who I am?” He winces immediately.

He can see T’Challa considering whether or not to lie for a moment. “Mhm,” he says, and Bucky knows it’s the truth.

Silence, taut and humid. “And that doesn’t, um, sway you from thinking I should do this?”

“Why would it?” he says calmly. Bucky bites his lip, cheeks hot. He is saved from answering that question a moment later. “You’re a really talented writer, Bucky,” he says. “That’s my concern here.”

“Thank you,” Bucky whispers.

He smiles warmly. “You’ll think it over?”

“I—yeah, of course.”

Bucky leaves in a daze, feeling airless with delight. He steps outside into the buttery evening light and immediately locks eyes with Steve, propped against the building.

“Hey,” Bucky laughs, “what are you doing here?”

Steve grins. “You were anxious, I wanted to be here when you got out.” Bucky laughs again, so in love with him, and throws his arms around Steve’s neck. “What was it?”

“Um,” Bucky begins, giddy, “he said, um, my story was really great and he thinks I should submit it to literary magazines.” He says it in a breathless rush, cheeks pink. “And he wants me to take a class he’s teaching in May.”

Steve blinks down at him. “Are you serious?” Bucky nods. “Buck! That’s so fucking great!” Bucky laughs and hugs him again, Steve holding him back with such enthusiasm that he lifts him up a bit. “I knew you’d kill it,” Steve says, setting him down and kissing his cheek. “I’m so proud of you.” Bucky giggles and pulls him in for a real kiss, obnoxious and disruptive in the middle of the street.

“Alright,” Steve says, tugging an arm around his waist and pulling him in. “Tell me everything.”

Spring has burst through in sudden bright patches, tulips in Bryant Park, couples and families on evening picnics, warmth thawed out from the seemingly endless chill allowing them to comfortably wear jean jackets. They get pizza and eat it sitting on a bench by the fountain, tucked close against one another, the day fading into perfect, pink tinted crispness as the sun sets. No one approaches them or stares, no men walk by resembling anyone terrible and sending shockwaves of dread ricocheting through Bucky. He and Steve kiss, and there is no instant of hesitation, his brain going stiff and haywire like too many electric currents lighting up at once the way it still occasionally does after all of this time. It’s one of the most uncomplicatedly happy nights Bucky has had in a while. Sometimes joy doesn’t have to be undercut with a price.

***

While their lives are punctuated with various classes and dinners with friends and lazy evenings in their beautiful home, there is also the glacially slow recovery of something resembling a sex life, which terrifies Bucky as much as it thrills him.

He is allowing himself, for the first time, to really, seriously think about having sex with Steve and whether he wants it. He wants to have sex with Steve, he can say that fairly confidently, but he wants it the way one wants to become famous or to pack up one night and move across the world: with very little acceptance of the reality of what it would mean and the labor involved. Sometimes, he lies awake with his head on Steve’s chest, feeling the faint thrum of Steve’s heartbeat against his cheek, thinking about sex.

Sometimes he sees it as something sensual and right, Steve’s hands soft and light on his skin, his whole body transformed to light and pleasure, the touch so gentle and good that even if he lay there and tried to remember all of the terrible things that sex used to be, he couldn’t. Like sex will light a spark in him that burns all of the bad things away, everything washed in a beautiful pale pink light, infinite miniuature stars bursting inside him, a glittering, endlessly unwinding path laid out in front of him for him to rediscover and enjoy if he just rips the band aid off.

And then, sometimes, there is the other extreme, that Steve will have him undressed and whatever it is about Bucky that had caused Alexander and Brock and everyone else who has ever abused him to do so will come over Steve and it will be exactly as violent and awful as it had been before, only it will have occurred to Steve why Bucky drew so much abuse.

He hasn’t started having more nightmares, but about half the time, they take on a terribly realistic, visceral quality that begin like moments from his current life, his real life. He’s started dreaming about Steve again. Steve’s body on top of his, heavy and restraining, his hands at Bucky’s throat. “Steve,” he whimpers in one of them, “Steve, please don’t, please, you promised you wouldn’t make me.”

“Yeah?” Steve sneers. “Did I? I don’t remember, sweetheart, you made me wait long enough.”

Another one begins very much like a typical nightmare. He is on the floor in Alexander’s living room, kneeling. Someone yanks his hair until he doubles back in pain, then hits him and kicks him in the stomach and when he opens his eyes, Steve is leering at him, disgusted.

He wakes up from these gasping and rattled and needing to remind himself that Steve would never do those things to him, that the Steve next to him, holding him and rubbing his back and asking if he needs water is the only version of Steve there will ever be. 

These are the two extremes, neither of which seem very likely, Bucky knows. There will be stilted panic and choked out, _stop, no, not that please_ s and abandoned attempts at sex and there will be moments of such safety and joy and excitement that they will both laugh, giddy at what they are able to create with one another, and they will weave between some forms of the two for a long time. It’s just frustrating, waiting so long with what feels like so little pay. He wants so badly to find something new that feels good, that feels briefly like the damaged parts of him are aligning themselves the way it had all those months ago in the shower upstate, but he is overwhelmed all of the things he could try and whether he wants to try them and it leaves him feeling breathless and pressured by himself.

They sit on the couch one night, making out as a bad comedy hums in the background. Bucky is straddling Steve’s lap, a position he has only recently become comfortable with, Steve’s hands safely high on his back. He feels warm and safe, a slight thrill coiling up his spine, content to lazily kiss until tumbling into bed to sleep but okay to try something maybe a step further. Very, very carefully, Bucky reaches for Steve’s hand and shifts it to his hip.

Steve takes a choked breath, eyes wide. “You okay?” he asks. Bucky nods and leans in to kiss him again, brief and soft, as Steve settles his other hand on Bucky’s hip, holding him steady. “I love you,” Steve tells him, barely breaking a kiss to do it.

“I love you, too,” Bucky says, rocking a bit against him, something heavy and warm rolling over in his stomach. Steve kisses his neck and Bucky exhales, slumping heavily against him, spun up in the touch like stumbling into curtains of silk, happy and calm.

Steve touches him under his shirt, fingers soft and hesitant up his spine, little miniature explosions triggered underneath Bucky’s skin. “Okay?” he asks, and Bucky nods.

Then Steve slips his fingers—very slowly, only enough to touch his hips—under the waist of Bucky’s sweats and whatever spell had come over him lifts. He arches out of Steve’s touch and Steve retracts his hand so fast Bucky almost isn’t sure it happened in the first place. Penny, alert, jumps up beside them and nudges between Steve and Bucky until Bucky tells her to sit.

“I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry,” Steve says. Bucky is still in his lap and he doesn’t especially want to move, too humiliated and startled to be alone, but Steve is touching his shoulder now and doesn’t look angry so Bucky stays.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers.

“Sh, no, I’m sorry, I should’ve asked, I’m so sorry.”

“Steve,” Bucky says tiredly. “It’s fine.” It is, it just startled him. He isn’t even sure if he’d been scared, only too surprised to think about if he wanted anything more, and too drained and embarrassed now to work it out. He leans his head into Steve’s shoulder and Steve kisses his head, letting him know it’s okay to just stay, and they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr, love u all very much your comments and messages are so wonderful


	29. twenty-nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> extremely brief discussions of abuse

Watching Bucky grow back is a singularly beautiful experience in Steve’s like. Bucky is the most remarkable person in the world, he has decided. To go through what he did and to flourish the way he is is a testament, Steve decides, to the fact that he is the greatest person in the entire world. 

One morning that week, Steve comes into the kitchen after a run to find Bucky there already, leaning over his laptop. Steve squeezes his shoulder and brushes past him for a glass of water and Bucky says, without looking up, “I think I’m gonna order a rice cooker.”

“Yeah?”

Bucky tilts the screen towards him. “Seems like a good investment.”

Steve stares at him, biting his lip against grinning. “Yeah,” he says, “agreed.” He leans in behind Bucky, kissing his shoulder, then his cheek, momentarily high with the simplicity with which it had happened, no fuss about money, no asking for permission, no anxiety about expressing what something he wants. The thing that catches him most is that Bucky doesn’t even notice, just smiles and puts his rice cooker in the cart and then asks Steve if he wants to have dinner with Natasha and Peggy that night, they’d asked.

“What?” Bucky says, confused, and it occurs to Steve that he is staring, dazzled, at Bucky.

“Nothing,” Steve says, pulling him in by the waist for a faint kiss on the mouth. “I love you. Dinner sounds great.”

“Hm,” Bucky says happily.

Steve is just proud of him in a way that transcends his ability to explain. The only thing bigger and more entirely-consuming than his pride for Bucky is his love for Bucky. He is constantly conscious of it; it is solid and present in his chest when Bucky lazily kisses him in the morning, it surges, twirling anxiously and insistently when he watches Bucky pay for coffee or give someone directions, when Bucky talks quickly and happily and without abandon about writing, when he spots the glittery flash of Bucky’s nails, when he feels the scars on Bucky’s back raise and indent and Bucky doesn’t flinch, when he does, when Bucky, after everything he has been through, undresses and lets Steve wrap his arms around him and hold him in the safe, warm space in their bathroom, the air quickening with a faint glow. Sometimes he thinks they are recovering rapidly, they have reached a happiness previously and still unknown to humans other than the two of them, something sacred and invaluable, what you might find if you could mine a star for the source of its light. Steve is, frankly, probably overly confident in their happiness; however hard it still is to get used to, however much pain there still is, for Bucky especially, they are exceptionally, extraordinarily happy.

The one part of their life that does not inspire this hubris in Steve is sex. He isn’t unhappy, he isn’t frustrated. It is just always an adjustment for Steve, a recalibration of what’s expected of him and how he can make Bucky feel safest and what he himself should adjust his expectations to. He thinks he might have overestimated the speed and ease that they would have arrived at it. He thinks he might have overestimated arriving there at all.

He does want to have sex with Bucky. He can admit that to himself without a gelatinous swoop of guilt in his stomach, now, that he is in love with Bucky and he is attracted to Bucky and even though he would never, ever, ever pressure him or punish him in any way for not wanting sex, Steve would very much like sex. He considers himself a pretty good boyfriend and he trusts himself with never hurting Bucky, but sometimes they will be kissing, fast and heated, and Steve will think, _maybe tonight_ and when they stop, he will have to take a few breaths to seem less aroused than he was. It doesn’t make him bad, Henry tells him. He is never frustrated, would never, ever hold against him the _no_ that had been ignored before. It’s just that Bucky is gorgeous, and kissing him is still as exciting as it had been when Steve was fifteen and had spent the last two years imagining what it would feel like to kiss him, and turning that off can be hard.

Witnessing Bucky get comfortable not with sex, but with the idea of sex, is new, too. If it can be called comfort. Even though they aren’t particularly doing more, they have started talking about it, quiet, confirmed conversations of how far they’re going to go as they make out in bed (which is never far) and, newly, tentative conversations about the possibility of sex, starting to become semi-frequent. 

The problem is that sometimes these conversations inspire exactly the opposite of the confidence Steve had assumed they would; they are a harsh, unhappy, guilt-inducing reminder of what Bucky went through. Bucky was _sexually abused._ Sometimes the meaning behind those words twists into terrible abstracts and he very nearly forgets how much everything in Bucky’s life is still shaped by the trauma he endured. Sex, especially, Steve is starting to understand, might never be indistinguisable from the ways it was used to hurt him. To torture him, really. Steve has to get used to Bucky asking things that make his vision shudder white with violence. One morning they are lying in bed, kissing, milky morning light washing them pale when Bucky tenses in his arms.

“Okay, baby?” Steve says gently.

“I—” Bucky begins, and hesitates, burying his face into Steve’s neck for a moment and taking a breath. “Will you ever want me to use drugs? In bed?”

“ _What?_ ” Steve chokes out. 

Bucky flinches, recoiling.

“Buck,” Steve says, calmer now, forcing himself to be, reaching briefly out to him until Bucky leans tentatively against the touch. “Buck, of—of course not. Never. Never, never, never.” Bucky nods, a little timid. “Baby,” Steve says, gentle, “why would you think that?”

Then he curses himself because he knows why.

Bucky rolls his shoulders, uncomfortable. “I know it makes it better, sometimes,” he whispers. His voice is so small. “I don’t mean, um, roofieing me, just, um.” He sits up and presses his face into his hands. Steve sits up too, laying a hand on his back, patient. “Poppers or pills or whatever, um, they made me—they made it feel better for—for whoever, um, I’m sorry.”

“How many people made you take drugs?” Steve says, voice caught horribly. He sometimes thinks the pit of Bucky’s suffering is bottomless, that he will just have to keep falling as new, terrible details reveal themselves. He had thought it was only Pierce.

Bucky flinches. “Only—only a couple times, and only—I mean, it’s not like they forced it down my throat, I mean, I _took_ them and—and sometimes I—sometimes they told me it would make it hurt less and it did.” His voice cracks; he shakes his head, ashamed. “But I—I hated it so much, I didn’t want to.”

Steve takes a long, hard breath. “I know you didn’t, Buck,” he says softly. Bucky’s shoulders relax a bit. “Baby, we will never, ever, ever use any kind of drug during sex. Ever. I promise.”

This, he has to get used to. 

There’s, “If I’m ever not doing what you want, I—just don’t hit me, please, just tell me and I’ll do better.”

And, “I wanna be able to see you, if that’s okay, I don’t want to have a blindfold.”

And, “Are you ever gonna want to choke me in bed?”

He says these things so simply, with dull horror-residue ringing through his voice, not so much belief that Steve will want to do any number of sadistic things that had been done to him, but needing to be sure these are off limits. Every time Steve holds him and reassures him, never, never, never, but it fills him with terrible helplessness that Bucky believes there is even a shred of a fraction of a chance Steve would want to hurt him.

“You know, Buck,” Steve says one of those times, tucking Bucky’s hair back for him. “I love you, and we’ll never do anything without talking about it first, but I just… there’s no timeline, you know? Just ‘cause we’ve gotten to a point where we can do some more things” —Kissing for more than a few minutes, showers and baths with no clothes, or less, Steve’s hands below his waist, over his clothes— “doesn’t mean we have to rush into other things, yeah? I promise there’s no hurry, baby.”

Bucky looks so startlingly relieved that Steve feels terrible that that hadn’t been clearer.

“I just…” Bucky begins. “I don’t know. I want this to be easy. It should be easy.”

“It’s okay,” Steve tells him, very gently. “It should be good, and comfortable, more than it’s easy.”

“I’m sorry I’m being difficult,” Bucky whispers.

“You aren’t, ever,” Steve says. He kisses Bucky’s nose to make him smile. “This is a process. You’re doing perfectly.”

“Thank you for being so good,” Bucky tells him, voice soft.

Steve’s heart turns over with emotion. “Right back at you,” Steve says.

At some point, it occurs to Steve that there is a chance that he never has sex with Bucky again. He’s spent the last year and a half promising Bucky it’s okay if they don’t ever have sex and it is, but to Steve’s private shame, until very recently he’d been confident that it wouldn’t come to that. He looked at Bucky, doing so well, beating every odd, so brave and bright and working so hard to recover, and he’d thought, of course he’ll want to have sex again and when he is ready, Steve will be so gentle and loving, will spend so long reminding Bucky that sex can be good and sweet and exciting and safe that after that, the path will smooth and straighten out into their inevitable happily ever after, marriage and kids and a healthy sex life.

It has just started to dawn for him that maybe Bucky won’t ever want to have sex again. And just—Steve could live with that. Like he told Bucky, like he told himself, not thinking anything would come of it, if they never have sex again Bucky is still the love of his life. But it makes him sad to think back on high school, on how even though they had been teenagers, awkward and idiotic with zero frame of reference, sex had been so good because it had been him and Bucky. It makes him so sad that the people who destroyed Bucky’s life took that from him maybe forever, another reminder of what happened to him, another violation. He usually thinks like that after abandoned attempts at making out or when Bucky arches away from a hand on his back. Sometimes he bounces back into optimism: look at Bucky, beloved by his friends, confident enough now to paint his nails and tie his hair into pretty twists, being told by professional writers that he should publish his work. Look at where he had been two years ago, one year ago, six months ago. Of course he’ll recover, flowers growing back over scorched earth so bright and full that the damage before isn’t even visible anymore.

(“I think,” Henry tells him cautiously, “that you should adjust your expectations a bit. I’m not saying Bucky won’t continue to recover and the things he struggles with won’t become easier, but Steve, Bucky was severely, severely abused. I don’t know how likely it is that everything gets fixed.”

“I know,” Steve says, too quickly, and it occurs to him he’d been half-hoping Henry tells him yes, of course Bucky recovers completely and everything fades into an ugly memory.)

But then he gets home, slightly deflated, and Bucky is there, wrapped in a sweatshirt of Steve’s and looking so happy Steve is back, like there’d been a part of him expecting Steve not to return, and Steve wraps his arms around Bucky and thinks he’s gained some weight back, it isn’t like embracing a rough sketch of a person’s body anymore, and Bucky kisses him and Steve can feel him smiling against it, and it almost doesn’t matter, as long as he has this, he has enough.

Other than the more complicated than ideal sex life and the nightmares and flashbacks that are still very present, their lives are happy. Steve tries to avoid thinking that, because every other time he has let himself accept his and Bucky’s happiness, something terrible has thrown itself in their way, but right now, things really do seem to be taking a solid, remarkable shape of happiness that isn’t crumbling under some new crisis.

Steve, a few weeks ago, accepted a week-long job in Southern California at the beginning of June. It is for some pieces for a movie starring Thor, who’d texted him and told him to take it (“Think of the nights out after filming! It’s been too long!”) He knows and likes the director, and part of the job is that they need to film him drawing, just his hands, because the main character is an artist and everyone apparently agreed he and Thor look enough alike for no one to tell the difference between their hands. 

“I do,” Bucky said, when Steve told him that point. He lifted Steve’s hand to his face and kissed his knuckles. “I’ll know.”

“Yeah, well, you’re gonna be staring at fucking Thor the whole time.”

Bucky kisses him, quick and teasing. “You aren’t wrong.”

Much to Clint’s delight and relief, he also takes a commission from the Louvre. Steve is quite proud of where his career has gone, but this is a new point of pride, something he thought about when he was twelve, poring over art books in the library and trying to convince his parents to take him and Bucky to the Met for their new exhibit. It isn’t until September, but Steve is thrilled all the same and Bucky is so excited that he insists they go to a fancy celebratory dinner. They go out to a restaurant for Italian where they drink a glass of champagne each, not enough to really affect them but enough that when they get home, they feel warm and fuzzier on the edges.

“I’m so proud of you,” Bucky tells Steve, kissing him in their mudroom, noses bumping in the dark.

“Well,” Steve says, “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Mm, bullshit.”

“No!” Steve protests. “You make me better in every way.”

Bucky kisses him again, slow and raw, the faint taste of champagne and the chocolate mousse they split between them. Their shoes and jackets are kicked aside until they are pressed together on the couch, lips almost bruised from the kiss, a string of fairy lights twinkling above them the only deviation from the darkness.

“Steve?” Bucky whispers, pulling away.

“Yeah?”

“Is—is just this okay?”

Steve pulls back a little further. Even in the pale, almost imperceptible white light, Bucky’s cheeks are flushed, his lips full and pink, eyes bright from the drink and the electric current thrumming between them. It hurts a little that he feels like he even needs to ask.

“Of course, baby,” Steve assures him.

Bucky smiles. “‘Kay.” He is the one who leans in again, the lines between their mouths going fuzzy and unimportant, the lights above them calm little stars.

***

Bucky, in the midst of his absolute elation for Steve, continues to be as okay as he has been in a long time.

He did, in fact, submit the story he wrote to a couple of publications. He is extraordinarily anxious, but he won’t hear from several of them for months so he puts it behind him. It is nothing, anyway. He knows he won’t get selected and he is fine with that, the pleasure of being singled out and praised was more than enough, he expects absolutely nothing else.

Still, classes continue to be good, a semblance of normalcy in the vast and tumultuous fabric of Bucky’s life and history. He works hard, he excels. He’s made some friends in the various commitments he now has every week, people he texts with to exchange links to items of clothing that had been pointed out or clarify deadlines, people he gets smoothies with afterwards or walks to the subway with.

“I don’t know,” he says one day to Wanda and Scott, out to lunch with them. “I feel like a person again, sometimes.”

“Buck,” Scott says, trying not to sound as sad as he is, “you were always a _person_ , buddy.”

But it hasn’t felt this real in a long time.

He had, for the first time in five years, gotten himself off the other night. It took a lot to conquer the shame, to quiet all of the imagined commentary from everyone who had called him a slut in the last five years, but it felt safe and it felt good and the knowledge that he could still do it after everything comforted him, made him believe maybe other things weren’t so impossible. He didn’t tell Steve. He hadn’t wanted it to be taken as an invitation for something else, and even though nothing Steve has ever done to him would suggest he would act like that, it still stopped him, and besides, reporting to his boyfriend that he jerked off felt a little too pathetic. Even so, it had felt important, a reminder that sexual things could still be for him again.

Still, he is overwhelmed by it all. Afterwards, he hadn’t wanted to think about anything sexual; he had curled up against Steve, trembling a bit with adrenaline, and ducked away when Steve leaned into kiss him. _I’m not a slut_ , he thought, closing his eyes and resting his head on Steve’s shoulder. _I only feel like that because sex was used to hurt me and control me and it’s hard to think of anything about sex in my terms._ Still, that night, he had thought about what every man who he’d slept with in the last five years would have said if they’d seen him, and he had kept jerking awake with disgust until Steve rubbed his back and lulled him into sleeping.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says quietly to Jennifer, “how I’m ever going to be able to do anything sexual without being unbelievably ashamed of it.”

“Well,” says Jennifer, “is there anything that you has helped with it, in the past? Either that you could do, or that Steve has done?”

“Um,” Bucky says, and he must flush, because Jennifer smiles.

“Bucky, I talk to a lot of patients about their sex lives after trauma. Only share if you want to, but I promise there’s no judgement here.”

Bucky laughs a little. “Okay,” he whispers. “Um. The—the reassurance afterwards really helps me, actually. Like, um, if Steve and I are kissing and he just—he reminds me, um, that it’s okay and I’m not, like, bad—that really helps.”

Jennifer says, “Have you told him that?”

Bucky shakes his head. “I don’t, um, want him to—to take it to mean that I want him to, um—I don’t want _anything_ rough or where he—he treats me like I’m fucking… younger, or like he’s in charge. I don’t want that. And if I—if I tell him I want him to tell me I’m good, I don’t want him to think I want that.” His cheeks are hot; he rubs Penny’s ears.

“Is Steve generally the type to assume anything like that?” When Bucky shakes his head, she goes on, “I think letting him know what feels good to you and what doesn’t is really, really important. With sex, you’re trusting him with something that’s been used against you in a lot of terrible ways, and if figuring out what works for you two is something you do want, which it seems like it is, I think it’ll give you a lot of relief to tell Steve the things that make you feel safe around sex. Especially since this is about more than even enjoyment, it’s about helping to combat the shame that you feel that, of course, is undeserved, and is based in the lies people told you about yourself around sex, but I know it can be very hard to unlearn and anything that helps you rewrite those thoughts is really important.”

Bucky thinks about this on his way home. Steve asks if he wants to meet at a cafe for lunch and he says yes, but Bucky doesn’t bring it up then, nor when they get home, nor that night when they tangle themselves together in bed. It is important, he knows, but it is also impossible right now, a plunge into territory he doesn’t want to enter right now, a kind of vulnerability that feels like it might flay him open. Steve holding him now, warm and entirely chaste, does not welcome the exhaustion and anxiety of even just talking about sex. That can wait. The selfless, complete safety of this moment could sustain Bucky for the rest of his life.

***

Several days later, Bucky walks out of class with Jim. Jim is the same age as him, a full-time engineering student, a warm, funny guy who is always the first to compliment everyone’s work and who’s stories always resolve around some kind of sci-fi element that feels slightly convoluted. They’ve become casual friends; they exchange texts about readings and walk to the subway together after class. Right now, they are talking about a restaurant in the Greenwich Village that Jim had gone to a few weeks before that made you eat blindfolded with no knowledge of what you’re eating. Bucky tells him, laughing, that it sounds pretentious. Jim says it absolutely was, but the food was great.

“I could take you, sometime, if you wanted,” Jim says suddenly, cocking his head. “Or somewhere else. I’d love to get dinner with you.”

Bucky is so astonished by this insinuation that he doesn’t say anything for a good thirty seconds. Jim shifts his weight. The idea of romantic attention from anyone other than Steve is laughable; the fact that Steve stays in love with him seems like a miracle every day.

“Um,” Bucky says, and realizes, inadvertently, he has pulled away. “I, um, I have a boyfriend. I’m—I’m sorry.”

Jim smiles. “No problem. He’s a lucky guy.”

Bucky is almost tempted to tell him he is dodging a bullet, or to tell Jim to go home and google his name and see if he still wants to be anywhere in the same vicinity with him. He smiles shyly.

“I should get going,” Jim says. “See you next week, Bucky. Take care.” He disappears into his side of the subway a little too fast, leaving Bucky utterly bewildered.

Bucky beats Steve home from a meeting with a future commissioner. He starts early on dinner, deciding on a lentil bolognese that they both like, a little anxious. Jim hadn’t wanted anything. He wanted dinner, and when Bucky said no he hadn’t pushed for anything at all. He doesn’t know what Bucky is, obviously, and he wasn’t trying to sleep with him.

There is just a part of him that feels like he’s done something shameful, like he was being mocked or solicited. The idea of anyone wanting him for anything other than sex has taken Steve months and months and months to establish, is still flimsy and unimaginable at times; for someone he barely knows to act like there is something attractive in him is violently laughable.

Steve doesn’t get home much later. He kisses Bucky’s cheek and asks about his day.

“Um,” Bucky begins, “I think a guy asked me out today.”

Steve glances up. “Oh?”

“He’s in my class,” Bucky continues, “uh, his name’s Jim. He, um, asked me to get dinner.” He winces a little: there is something shameful in it, Steve is going to think it’s ridiculous that anyone was interested in Bucky, Steve is going to think Jim was asking him for sex— “I said no,” Bucky adds quickly. “I promise.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Steve says quietly. “Was he nice when you said no?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, “he was really nice.”

The water begins to boil, bubbles rolling frantically over themselves. Steve dumps the pasta in. “Well,” he says, with the slightest strain in his voice, a little tilt of his head to the right that has been present since he was a child when he is trying to act nonchalant. “He has good taste.” When he smiles, it’s genuine, but there’s a blankness behind his eyes.

“What?” Bucky asks, breathless with nerves.

“Nothing, Buck. Seriously. I’m glad he was nice. What’d he say?”

“Um. I said I had a boyfriend, and he said he’s a lucky guy.”

Steve kisses his temple. “He is a lucky guy.”

“What is it?” Bucky says again. The worry is folding over itself, thickening.

Steve stirs the pasta, lips pursed very carefully. “What’s Jim like?”

Bucky watches him, surprised. “Are you jealous?” Steve gives Bucky the faintest begrudging smirk. “Jim,” Bucky says, “had his first Met exhibit when he was sixteen, so…”

“Oh, fuck off,” Steve says. He is laughing now, relaxed again. “Seriously. Do you… did any part of you want to go out with him?”

For the second time that day, Bucky is rendered silent with astonishment. “Steve,” he says finally, “c’mon. There’s only enough room in this relationship for one of us to be unbelievably irrational.”

Steve laughs, caught off guard. “Seriously!” he says, a little half-hearted. “I—look, neither of us have that much romantic experience besides each other, and if you were… I don’t know, interested—”

He breaks off because Bucky kisses him, full and sure, one hand in his hair. “Babe,” he says when he pulls apart, “do you really think that I have another romantic relationship in me at this moment in my life?”

Steve grins. “I was just asking.”

“I love you,” Bucky says. He kisses Steve’s jaw. “I don’t want anyone else, ever.”

Steve tilts his head down so their foreheads touch. “Me neither.” Bucky sighs happily, enjoying the familiar contentment of embracing Steve this way. “I don’t blame Jim, though.”

“Shut up,” Bucky giggles.

Steve kisses him once more, then holds him, one arm around Bucky’s waist, other hand stirring the pasta. They sway a little. Bucky wonders how anyone could ever be happy with anything other than this.

***

Sunday morning, eleven am. The kitchen is washed in dusty rain light as endless droplets glitter against their back wall and they prepare breakfast. They dragged themselves out of bed twenty minutes ago after kissing for a long time until Bucky declared that he was hungry and making them both raspberry pancakes, and Steve had kissed him all over again while he giggled. As Bucky mixes the batter, Steve opens his laptop to answer a couple of emails. 

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says. “What if we buy a pottery wheel and put it in the studio?”

Bucky laughs. “Seriously?”

“They’re four hundred dollars.” Bucky looks over Steve’s shoulder to find that he is, in fact, scrolling through pottery wheels.

“You do need a new angle, I think, if you’re trying to make it as an artist,” Bucky teases. “Who knows, maybe ceramics are gonna be your next big influential thing—”

“Fuck off,” Steve tells him, laughing. “I meant for us.”

“I know,” Bucky giggles. “Sure, Stevie. Get us a pottery wheel.”

Steve grins and turns to kiss him. Steve still looks softened with sleep, hair mussed, pajamas making him look warmly disheveled, slight dusting of stubble that he hasn’t gotten yet. Bucky is in love with him. 

“You’ve got a little pancake mix on your chin,” Steve informs him, and, before Bucky can do anything about it, licks it off for him, the stubble rubbing an itch into his skin. He doesn’t mind.

“Steve, Jesus, you’re disgusting,” Bucky laughs, swatting him away. “You’re getting none of these pancakes.”

Steve grins at him, kissing his cheek again and then turning away. Next to him is one of the glazed bowls that they had brought home, a little lopsided and haphazard-looking but theirs, perfectly molded into the home that is so full of untouchable contentment, everything in it a tiny colored piece of the mosaic of their life.

“Hey,” Steve says, spinning it. “Wanna do another one?”

“Hm?”

“Well,” Steve says, and this time he has gone almost bashful. “Taking that class with you was really, really fun. If you wanted to do another one, I would love to.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow, grinning. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Steve tells him. “It could be anything. There are so many classes available. After this one’s over, I’m sure there are a ton this summer.”

Bucky shoulders him. “You have anything specific in mind?”

“Well,” Steve says, “we are going to Paris in a few months. It wouldn’t hurt to have some French down.”

“ _Oui_ ,” Bucky says. Steve kisses him again, this time for so long that Bucky breaks away and gasps, “Oh, my god, the pancakes!”

Laughing, Bucky rescues the pancakes, only slightly charred, and scoops them onto a serving plate. When the flame has been safely turned off, Steve pulls Bucky in and kisses him again, Bucky’s arms around Steve’s neck, on his tiptoes, weightless in Steve’s arms as the smell of batter rises around them. Now, there is no need or want for anything more; anything that exists out of this moment is small and irrelevant. This is what Steve had hoped for all those years without Bucky. This is what everyone hopes for, happiness stripped down to its barest, purest form.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr i love all of u very much esp henry for all ur unbelievably good inspiration that is very much shaping this hehe


	30. thirty

The thing about Bucky’s identity having been shocked from him through trauma for four years is that he lost sight of the ability to know what he likes, much less the ability to safely explore it. He was whatever he was told to be, and when no one was looking at him and waiting for a performance, what he was was tired and miserable. The things he has now; the ability to do what he likes and buy clothes he likes and wear his hair how he likes and paint his nails—is still jarring in its vast privilege. The ability to just be is a privilege that still shocks and scares and warms him.

He’s liked soft, pretty, feminine things since he was a little kid and already too wary of what his father would say to do anything about it. Steve knew, although there was really nothing to know because it wasn’t something Bucky acted on, just something he thought about, a point on the horizon that could be reached in his life post-high school with Steve. And then, of course, it hadn’t.

When he talked to Jennifer about this, and mentioned that pretty things appealed to him even more than they had when he was a teenager, she smiled and said, “Well, that’s pretty normal. You’re growing into yourself in a way you never got the chance to do before, and those things are vastly different from anything that you experienced before. It’s more than okay to want to explore that part of you, you know. No one is singularly faceted.”

And basically, he has. It does make him feel better and safe and clean and as attractive as he ever feels. But it is still a process, this rebuilding of himself and his wants after it has been brought, shuddering, to rubble through abuse. Sometimes, he is still startled by things he likes and wants and has to be reminded that there is nothing to be ashamed of with it the way he had with nail polish.

He’s out with Steve one day in a boutique, because Wanda’s birthday is coming up and they want to buy her a nice gift. They sift through artisanal candles and crystal bath salts and clothing sprayed in a tasteful perfume for a few minutes until they come upon a cream cashmere sweater.

“She’ll like this,” Bucky says. “I think this is the one.”

“Great,” Steve says, smiling. “Hey, you mind if I try on some of these jeans?”

Bucky shakes his head. He picks the sweater up and Steve ducks into the changing room.

While he waits, Bucky wanders aimlessly around the store. He’s browsing, half-looking, wanting Steve to hurry up so they can get lunch, when his gaze falls on the lingerie display and his heart rises frantically to his throat in interest.

He glances nonchalantly behind him. The only person in sight is the cashier, who is reading and not at all interested in him. He turns back and sifts briefly through the lace and silk. 

They are all very delicate looking, like they could be pulled apart with very little force, but when he touches them, they are more durable than they look. The colors, soft pastels and elegant blacks and reds, touch the same nerve in his chest that is pulled by nail polish, by soft, pretty clothing, by flowery lotions and shimmery hair ties. He swallows, glances back one more time, and rubs over a pink one, softer then it looks.

“Hey.”

Bucky startles and looks up. Steve is there, head cocked, waiting for him. He realizes he’s still holding the underwear; he flushes and drops it, looking away.

Steve raises his eyebrow, then looks down, then back at Bucky.

“You buying those jeans?” Bucky says breathlessly.

Steve gives him a long look. “Yeah.” He glances down again, then, slowly, quirks his lips into a smile. “Did you wanna…” He nods down, and Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets.

“No,” he says shortly. “C’mon, let’s go.” He takes Steve’s hand and drags him away before he can ask him about it anymore.

Bucky waits beside Steve while he pays, cheeks flushed, trembling a little with fading adrenaline. Steve doesn’t say anything to him until they’re outside, bell ringing lightly to signal their exit. He holds Bucky’s hand and thumbs over his knuckles, soft and reassuring.

“If you wanted it,” Steve says, very casual, “you should get it.”

Bucky purses his lips and doesn’t look up. “It doesn’t have to be anything, Buck,” Steve adds, “it’s just something you like.”

“It’s weird,” Bucky says, cheeks flushed.

Steve stops walking. “Bucky. It’s not weird.”

“I just…” Bucky swallows. “I like things that make me feel, um. Clean, and—and—and safe, and far away from—from what I used to be, you know?”

“Where you used to be,” Steve corrects him quietly. Bucky shrugs, then nods half-heartedly. “That makes total sense, baby. There’s absolutely nothing weird about that.” He pauses. “And you don’t need an excuse, you know? If you just wanna buy something pretty for yourself ‘cause you like it, that’s fucking fantastic, too.”

Bucky gives him a small smile. “Maybe,” he says quietly. He is relieved at Steve’s complete lack of assumption that it’s some kind of sex thing.

“You wanna go back—”

“No,” Bucky says. “Not now. I don’t, um.” He blushes. “No.”

“Okay.” Steve kisses his forehead. “Lunch?”

***

A few days later, Bucky has, for the most part, stopped thinking about it. Steve has a meeting that morning; he kisses Bucky’s hair in bed and says he’ll be back in the afternoon, and Bucky mumbles sleepily to have a good meeting and rolls over for another hour.

When he wakes up, the house is empty and bright; he changes and makes the bed and goes downstairs to eat. He doesn’t notice the bag until after he feeds Penny. It’s sitting in the middle of the kitchen island, pale pink and fluffed with tissue paper. He raises an eyebrow and picks it up.

Beside it, Steve left a note.

__

_Buck—_

_I hope you know that I have absolutely no expectations with these. Just keep them if you want, throw them out if you don’t. I just want you to have things that make you feel good. I love you._

_Steve :)_

Bucky reads it twice, endeared by the fact that Steve specified the note’s writer and recipient, then pushes open the bag.

And oh, _oh._ He blushes, even though there’s no one here to see him.

Steve has bought him the lace panties from earlier that week, or a similar pair. He’s bought them in different colors, too, pale pink and blue and purple and mint. Bucky bites his lip, hard. They are deeply feminine and visibly expensive, obvious from the bag with gold lettering and the fineness of the stitching and the fact that they are probably made for men. 

He stares at them. He thumbs over the embroidered arches that curve into flowers and attractions. In the bag, he realizes, there are also three silk pairs, one powder blue and one black and one pink— _Christ,_ Bucky thinks, Steve is something else. They are simpler, extremely soft, a little bow marking the front. 

He stares at them all, biting his lips. He reads the note again. Not expecting anything. This is not some kind of sex thing, Steve is not trying to truss him up like a toy. He would never. The thought washes over Bucky and calms him.

He has a brief, vivid flash, though, of Steve thumbing over the curve of his waist, looking at him in lace, and he blushes again.

He picks up the mint pair and slips into the bathroom and pulls them on, hands trembling. They are softer and lighter than he’d expected them to be. Steve got the right size. His breath hitches.

They are _pretty_. There’s really no other possible description. It looks out of place beside the scars on his thighs and stomach, like a corsage dropped at a crime scene. They’re so pretty that the marks aren’t even the first thing he sees.

He smiles in the mirror. He pulls his jeans back over them.

***

Bucky doesn’t say anything about the lingerie to Steve for the rest of the week, but Steve doesn’t mind. He gets home that night and Bucky hurdles himself into his arms and hugs him, but they don’t speak about it and they don’t need to. 

Eight days later, Steve is sitting on the couch replying to emails and rubbing Penny with his foot while Bucky showers upstairs. When he finishes, he comes into the living room in a soft pink shirt and sweats and buries himself in Steve’s lap, resting his head against his chest and sighing. Steve kisses his hair and smiles at the strawberry shampoo.

“You okay?”

Bucky looks up. “Mhm. I’m good.”

Steve smoothes a hand over Bucky’s hair, adoring. “How’s that painting you’re working on coming?” Bucky asks him.

“Pretty good. I think the movie stuff is a little boring, but whatever. It isn’t too hard, so I think I can finish that piece tomorrow.”

“It looks great to me.”

“Thanks, baby. Last class this week, right?”

“Yeah.” Bucky pauses. “I’m so glad I did it.”

Steve smiles. “Me, too. You signed up for the spring one he asked you to do?”

“Yep. Starts the first week of June. I’m excited.”

The simple, exquisite privilege of just holding Bucky while they talk about their days crashes over Steve very suddenly. He kisses Bucky’s forehead, holding himself there for a moment. When he pulls back, Bucky reaches up, touches his cheek, and pulls him into a kiss.

Sleepy and familiar, Steve rubs his back while they kiss. He has gotten used to this type of kissing, lazy and content, the desire left underneath gentle, chaste intimacy. It’s comfortably warm, spreads syrup through his body until Bucky pulls away, shy.

“Can I try something?” Bucky says quietly. Steve nods, eyes widening. Bucky takes a breath and sits up and straddles Steve. Steve’s breath goes sharp in his throat. He stares at Bucky and pushes a stray bit of hair behind his ears. Bucky smiles.

He kisses Steve, both hands on his face. Adoration swells and wanes in Steve’s chest, the rhythm of the ocean before rain.

Bucky pulls back, unsure, going still. “Hey,” Steve says, pushing back loose hair. “Stay with me, baby.”

“I’m here.” Bucky says. “Can I just, um…” Another soft breath. Steve rubs his hand in circles, patient. Very nervously, Bucky takes Steve’s hand and guides it to his waist and then holds it there. His eyes are big and bright. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, infatuation sweeping him. “That’s okay.”

“You can—you can reach under my clothes,” Bucky whispers.

Steve says cautiously, “Are you sure, baby?” A shiver of hope and excitement.

“Yeah.”

Under Bucky’s shirt, Steve traces a heart over his ribs, a little shaky. Bucky laughs, breathless, then catches Steve’s hand again and shifts it down, under the waistband of his pants.

Steve’s fingers catch on the thin fabric; Bucky is wearing lace. His mind goes momentarily blank and bright.

“Buck,” he says, voice choked, overwhelmed by the fact that Bucky is sitting in his lap wearing lace that Steve bought him. “Baby.”

Bucky blushes, fully, completely blushes, and whispers, “Do you mind?”

“I have never minded anything less,” Steve tells him, and kisses him. Bucky throws his arms around Steve’s neck, jostling them both a bit; Steve’s hand on the curve of Bucky’s thigh, thumb rubbing over the lace, he is dizzy with love and unimaginable attraction. “Jesus, Buck. I love you.”

Bucky’s hand is trembling against his cheek; Steve takes it and kisses his knuckles. His brain is haywire wondering which ones, what color, what Bucky had looked like pulling them on. He kisses Bucky on the lips again.

“If you want,” Bucky whispers, “you can—you can see them.”

“Is that what you want?” Steve breathes.

“They do look pretty good on me,” Bucky says, and smirks nervously.

Steve laughs, exhilaration coiling down his spine. “I bet.”

Bucky giggles. Steve’s hands are shaking when he tugs at the waistband of Bucky’s sweatpants, apparently, in the rush of spectacular adrenaline, forgetting that it will not be possible to get them off in this position.

“Do you mind standing?” Steve whispers.

Bucky laughs on an exhalation. “Yeah. I mean, no.” Steve kisses him once more and they both stumble to their feet.

They stand across from each other for a moment, nervous. Steve is reminded of being seventeen in a motel room, staring at Bucky, aware of the way the light was throwing shadows over him, slightly anxious he might faint from anticipation and attraction. It is not far from the current emotion trembling through him.

Steve steps in and kisses him, one hand warm on his cheek, as heavily as they’ve ever kissed. Even their legs press against each other. Steve touches Bucky’s back and his chest and then, again, slips his hands into Bucky’s pants, the thin lace shooting little electric sparks through his fingertips.

“Okay if I…”

“Yeah.”

Steve’s hands are nervous, and he fumbles with the sweats and Bucky does most of the work, pushing them off and then kicking them aside. 

Bucky stares at him, breathing hard enough that Steve sees his chest rise, nerves and arousal. He cocks his head a bit, anxious. Steve knows he should reassure him that everything he is is perfect, but he is lost for words, staring at Bucky in a pink shirt and lace underwear with his hair falling around his shoulders, so beautiful and brave, biting his lip.

“Buck,” Steve manages. “You’re so beautiful.”

Bucky smiles, eyes bright. When Steve folds his arms around Bucky and kisses him, he thinks inexplicably of tissue paper, delicate and bright, how easily it can crumble if handled wrong.

They stumble backwards and return to the couch, Bucky in Steve’s lap. Steve’s heart is threatening to burst from his chest.

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Could we—could we turn a light on?”

“Yeah, love, of course.” It’s gotten dark rapidly since Bucky came downstairs; when Steve, reluctantly, lets go of Bucky with one arm to reach for the lamp, everything is made warm in the faint creamsicle glow. “That okay?”

Bucky nods, smiling.

“Buck?” Steve says, voice caught. “Could you—could you tell me what you want tonight?” It is not as smooth as Steve wishes it had been, but he wants to know, wants to keep this safe and stable.

“Um,” Bucky says, and his voice is high and breathy. “I don’t—I don’t think I want to have sex, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He had expected as much. “Of course. Anything else you really do or don’t want?”

“Can—can we kiss, first?” Bucky blushes more, somehow. “Um. Can we see from there?”

“Of course.” Steve smiles and does just that.

From the floor, Penny sighs. They startle apart; she’s watching them, Steve swears protectively. He had forgotten she was there.

“Pen,” Bucky laughs, “go lie down in the kitchen.” He points to the door. She listens, clearly unhappy about it.

Grinning, Steve pulls Bucky back into the kiss. His lungs and heart and blood have ceased to exist, it is just bolts of electricity thrumming through him.

“You’re so pretty, Bucky,” Steve whispers. The slight, warm hitch of Bucky’s breath tells him that was the right thing to say. “My baby, my sweetheart, my pretty girl.”

Bucky tenses at that, and Steve curses himself. “Red,” Bucky says, voice small, as Steve says, “Sorry, sorry, baby, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Bucky says, very quickly, “if you want to—”

“I don’t,” Steve says right away. “Really, Buck. I won’t again.”

He relaxes a little. “Everything else was good. I just—I don’t like that.”

“Got it,” Steve says. “I won’t do it again, baby, I’m sorry.” Bucky gives him a small, grateful smile, then leans in and kisses him, very softly. “We can stop,” Steve tells him, pulling back.

“I don’t want to stop,” Bucky says, and smiles shyly. 

Steve’s breath catches. “You sure?” And when Bucky nods, Steve kisses him on the mouth again, slow and sparkling.

Bucky’s voice is breathy and high when he says, “You can touch me if—if you want to.”

Steve swallows hard. “Do you want me to?”

Bucky exhales. “Yeah.”

So Steve moves his hand, very soft and careful, underneath pink lace and touches him. He feels dazzled by Bucky, so aroused and so in love and in awe of this person in his arms who is so spectacular, so breathtaking that Steve can feel every miniscule compression and release of his heart in his chest. He watches Bucky’s face, cheeks flushed, lips parted a little, eyes mostly shut except for the flutter of his eyelashes, hair coming loose, tumbling down to brush the soft pink fabric of his shirt. Bucky’s arms are tight around Steve’s neck, clinging to him, as though Steve would ever let him go. Steve leans in and kisses him on the mouth, because he thinks it might kill him not to. Steve is hard in his jeans but he barely registers it.

Jesus, how could anyone brutalize this? How could anyone want to rip this into tatters, how could they not nearly crumble under the privilege of having Bucky this close, under the overwhelming desire to protect and cradle and cherish him?

 _Because you’re talking about people who paid an eighteen year old for sex_ , Steve thinks harshly, then swallows and forces the thought back. He wants to be here, completely, bathed and surrendered in the impossible reality that is Bucky trusting him like this, wants to give him everything, pleasure and sex and every star hung in the sky.

Bucky gasps a little, his body hitching. Steve slows down.

“Want me to stop?”

“N-No, I just—I don’t know, I’m sorry—”

“Hey.” With his free hand, Steve touches Bucky’s face. “It’s okay, my love, there’s nothing to be sorry for. Can you tell me what you need?”

Bucky closes his eyes, catching his breath. “I don’t want you to stop, I just—I don’t want to—I don’t know. I don’t want to do anything wrong.”

“Hey,” Steve says, very gently. “You are doing everything perfectly. I’ve never seen anyone so perfect baby. I love you so much, I want you to feel good. You couldn’t do anything wrong.”

“Okay,” Bucky whispers. “I—okay. I love you.”

“You sure you don’t want to stop?”

Bucky shakes his head.

“Tell me if you want me to stop, ‘kay?” Steve whispers. Bucky nods, pressing a brief, hard kiss to Steve’s neck as Steve begins to touch him again, the air thick and iridescent around them, time having stopped applying to them.

“You okay, love?” Steve manages, voice hoarse and soft. Bucky nods.

“‘M good, Stevie.” So Steve keeps moving his hand and Bucky shudders in his lap, but it isn’t fear. He drops his head against Steve’s shoulder and hugs him closer.

“Still good?”

“Y-Yeah.” And then, a few moments later, utterly breathless, “Steve, Stevie, I’m—”

“You okay if I finish?”

“Y-Yeah, I want you to.” His voice is high and wrecked in the most beautiful way Steve has ever heard.

“I love you,” Steve tells him. “Can I kiss you?” Bucky doesn’t answer, because he tilts his chin against Steve’s and brushes their mouths together. He can see Bucky growing anxious, knows that he is still fighting a hurricane of shame in order to allow himself this without hearing the voices of the people who used this as a weapon. He slows his hand a little.

“You’re so good, Buck,” Steve whispers. “You’re so beautiful, you’re doing so good, I can’t believe how lucky I am, baby, I love you so much, I wanna make you feel good, okay?” The tension in Bucky’s shoulders uncoil a bit; his eyes flash with recognition. He nods, almost dazed, almost surrendered, _Steve’s_ , he is Steve’s and he is letting himself be Steve’s and no one has ever been given a gift like that, like the unbelievable, unimaginable reward of having someone so spectacular giving themselves over to you; better than winning the lottery, better than saving the world, better than all of the bits of religion that have faded into oblivion for Steve about entering some kind of holy kingdom. And Steve is his, the hand he’s moving between Bucky’s thighs and the breath being pulled sharply out of his lungs isn’t his, it’s Bucky’s, has been Bucky’s since before the first time he touched him, was brought onto this earth to be Bucky’s.

What he had noticed a few months ago in the shower and what he notices again now is that Bucky still crescendos over the same as he had since the first time Steve made him come and had been dazzled by the raw, quivering tenderness that could be between two people. He moans very quietly, and breathily, a small, high gasp, eyelashes fluttering, cheeks pink, quieter and more delicately than anyone else Steve has ever had sex with, shuddering. Afterwards, Bucky slumps against Steve’s chest with a sigh, and Steve wraps both arms around him and cradles him like he’s something precious and delicate.

“I love you,” Steve whispers. “You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. You’re so, so, so wonderful, Bucky. I love you so, so much.” He wants sex and love to be the same for Bucky again, wants him to know that this can be good, that it can be beautiful. So Steve holds him.

“I love you,” Bucky murmurs into his neck. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Steve replies. Bucky lifts his head just a bit in order to bury it in Steve’s neck again.

“Fuck,” Bucky says, after a happily silent few minutes. “might’ve ruined these.”

Steve laughs. “It’ll wash out. If it doesn’t, I’ll buy you more.”

Bucky blushes. “I really like them,” he whispers. “I didn’t tell you before.”

Steve kisses his forehead. “Good. I’m glad.” Bucky sighs, eyelashes fluttering shut. “Want me to run a bath?”

“Will you stay with me?”

“You couldn’t get rid of me.”

Bucky kisses him, soft and lazy, not tilting his head enough to really kiss him, just brushing their lips together. His cheeks are wildly flushed, eyes diamond bright. 

Steve scoops Bucky up in his arms and carries him, stopping every few feet to kiss him. Upstairs, Bucky feels airless, galaxies and planets and burning comets spinning around him and Steve. The beautiful, anxious thrill has arched and descended and he feels warm and happy. The things he had been scared of, for now, feel small and laughable; Steve held him, Steve told him he was beautiful and made him feel so wanted and loved.

He is smiling sleepily at Steve setting the bath temperature when he becomes aware of the sensation of come on his stomach, sticky and suddenly unwelcome. It’s a feeling that makes him feel immediately anxious, dirty enough to crawl out of his body. He doesn’t want that to take over this night.

He whispers, “You mind if I just rinse off first?”

“‘Course not.”

Bucky bites his lip. “You mind coming with me?”

Steve smiles.

The water is warm right away and Bucky uses his favorite body wash and when he’s clean he immediately feels better. 

In the shower, they kiss clumsily, laughing a bit, arms locked tight around each other. He can feel that Steve is hard, his boxers clinging to his skin, making it very obvious. Selfishly, when this has happened in the past, he’s ignored it. Right now, though, there is a surge of courage and excitement, adrenaline that hasn’t quite come down before, absolute, complete knowledge that he is safe. Slowly, uncertainly, Bucky reaches down to touch his thigh, then to palm through his boxers.

Steve’s shoulders brace a little, surprised. “You don’t have to do that, Buck,” Steve tells him, his voice caught.

“I know,” Bucky says. And he does. He gives Steve a small smile. “Do you want me to?”

“Do—do you want to?”

Bucky bites his lip and then says, “Can I try?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Yeah, yeah, of—of _course_ but—but you want to, right, you aren’t just doing it ‘cause you think you owe me, right, ‘cause you don’t, I promise—”

“I know,” Bucky assures him. “I know.”

Bucky looks at Steve as he moves his hand, eyes wide, slipping it under the fabric. Steve, every five seconds, says, “This okay? You okay?” anxiously, but Bucky doesn’t mind. It hammers home the knowledge that this is completely safe. He could stop anytime he wanted to, but he doesn’t want to. He knows he doesn't owe it to Steve but he wants to light the same sparks in him that are still popping and fizzling in Bucky’s stomach.

There’s a pleasure in making Steve feel good that Bucky isn’t sure is entirely organic, but doesn’t feel bad, exactly. He likes watching Steve get closer to the edge and then arch over, his voice still sweet and safe, his hands gentle. He likes being held while it happens and kissed immediately after in thanks. None of it feels like something that could have happened to him before. Even the way Steve breathes is different, lacks the harsh, pornographic edge that Bucky grew used to in men’s voices and moans while he got them off. Steve doesn’t behave like them, so Bucky doesn’t behave the way he would have, either. The instinct to make himself small and meek and obedient waves over him but then he remembers he is with Steve, Steve who doesn’t expect him to get onto his knees or bend over for him, Steve who will not be angry at him if he wants to stop, and Bucky holds onto him with his other arm, head tilted a little into his shoulder, held and protected. The actual action of what he’s doing, he doesn’t especially enjoy, but he doesn’t hate it, either. 

“Bucky,” Steve whispers, over and over, “god, I love you.” It turns his rapidly beating heart over in pleasant circles. He smiles.

It doesn’t last long enough for Bucky to begin to grow anxious, anyway. Steve makes sure he doesn’t grip Bucky tighter while he finishes, but afterwards, he kisses his face and tells him, “I love you, I love you so much, are you okay? You’re so perfect.” Hearing that sends a wave of warmth rolling through Bucky. Steve may not think he needs sex to have worth, and maybe it’s true, but the feeling of making Steve feel good satisfies something deep and anxious in Bucky.

In the bathtub, they are quiet. Bucky leans into Steve, holding his hand against his chest, staring at the stray glitter from their bath bomb gliding over the top of the water. Steve kisses his ear, and he sighs.

“You okay, baby?”

Bucky nods. “That’s my favorite one.”

“Hm?”

“Of nicknames.” He looks up and smiles, his eyes sleepy and full of stars. “Baby.”

Steve laughs. He loves Bucky always, but there are moments that love breaks over him, spilling like the crest of a wave in brilliant white light, and he forgets how to breathe. “You are my baby.”

Bucky hums, soft and content. “How come I’m the baby?” He’s smiling.

Steve kisses his nose. “‘Cause I’m older.” He kisses each of Bucky’s eyelids. Bucky laughs.

“But I was bigger when we met.”

“But I’m bigger now.”

“Hm,” Bucky says, resigned.

“You’re gonna be my baby even when I’m a hundred and you’re ninety-eight.”

“Or ninety-nine,” Bucky protests. “Half the year you’re only one year older than me.”

Steve kisses his cheek. “True.”

Quiet, safe and impermeable. Water rocks against the tub, their own miniature current.

“Buck?” Steve says. “Did you like it?”

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers. “I did. I—I thought it might be scary, but it’s not with you. Felt good.”

“Good,” Steve whispers. “I love you.”

Bucky sighs and tucks himself into Steve’s lap where he squirms a bit, visibly anxious. Steve smooths a hand over his hair. “Okay, sweetheart?”

Bucky takes a breath. “Did you, um. Do you—Did it bother you that I was, um, making noise?”

“What?”

“Um. Moaning and whatever. You know.” He won’t look at Steve now.

“What?” Steve says, genuinely astonished. “I—no. No, Buck. Of course not. No. I—why would—”

“A lot of people wanted me to be quiet,” Bucky whispers.

Steve whispers, “Oh.” Then he whispers, “Buck. There’s nothing I _want_ from you like that. I just want you to feel safe and to enjoy what we’re doing, I—I’m not ever gonna… have a problem with anything you are, okay? I love you. I love everything about you.”

Bucky nods slowly, tilting his head into the crook of Steve’s shoulder. Then he takes a sharp breath.

“Do you want me to be, like, submissive?” Bucky’s voice is even, but he clenches the comforter in his fist.

Steve kisses his shoulder; he is becoming better at controlling the horror at these questions. “No. I don’t want anything you don’t want.”

Bucky sighs a bit at that, leaning into Steve’s chest. “Okay.” They’re quiet together. “It’s—I’m—I don’t—” He breaks off, turning his face to bury it in Steve’s neck.

“It’s alright, love,” Steve says. “Take your time, you’re okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

Carefully, Bucky begins, “I don’t want that either, I don’t—I hated having to do that with all those people, I hated it, I just—um. I don’t know I don’t—I don’t ever want you to, um, hit me or tie me up or humiliate me or anything like that, um, at all.” Underneath his palm, Bucky’s heartbeat has sped up to a rapid, insistent pulse. Steve finds his hand and squeezes. “But I—I like, um, I like that you—you were kind of taking the lead but not—not making me do anything? And when we kiss, too, and I—I was a little anxious about what to do and you just—you made it so I didn’t have to decide but I got to choose and that felt, um, really good. And I guess… I like feeling smaller than you not like—not like you could, um, throw me around or anything but you… the way you held me and took care of me really felt good.” Another pause. “And you—when you tell me I’m good, that really helps me feel, um, not scared and not like I—I should be ashamed.”

“You are good, Buck,” Steve whispers. “There’s never been anyone as good as you.”

Bucky buries his face in Steve’s shoulder and nods. 

“You don’t think I’m gross or needy or a slut?”

Steve winces. “No, baby. Hey” —Bucky looks up at him, so worried— “you’re beautiful. You were perfect.”

Bucky smiles and leans, exhausted, back against Steve. “Sorry,” he whispers. “I just—it’s really hard for me to not feel like—like sex, um. Like you aren’t seeing me the way that—you know. And—and it’s always worse right after, not while it’s happening. I, um—” Another pause; his cheeks redden. “Those” —he nods to the underwear, a scattered smear of pink on the bathroom floor— “It isn’t—I don’t want them for a sex thing.” His voice rises, almost defensive, sitting up a bit.

“I know,” Steve tells him, “I didn’t think they were.” 

Bucky eases back against him again. “But, um. They made me feel really good and—and pretty.” His voice is barely a whisper. “And I think this stuff is easier for me when, um, when I feel like I am kind of attractive? And like… like I could see why you’re attracted to me?”

Steve kisses his temple. “You are the prettiest, most attractive person in the whole world, baby. All the time.”

Bucky tilts his back down so his lips graze Steve’s shoulder. He is smiling. “It felt good,” he whispers again. “It made me feel, um, loved and—and hopeful. I don’t—I don’t want to have sex, um, tomorrow or anything” —A little sharp again, a little defensive. Steve squeezes his hand.— “But it just… it felt good and safe.”

Steve doesn’t say anything because the trust in those words is too much for him, floods his chest with warm, weightless light. He kisses Bucky’s hair, then his cheek, then his lips, very lightly, both of them smiling through it. It’s ten minutes before Steve speaks again.

“Buck?” Steve says. Bucky hims in response. “When we, um, were in the shower” —Bucky smirks, almost amused— “How did it feel? For you? Was it okay?”

Bucky pauses; Steve is briefly terrified that he’s going to say he hated it, it made him feel sick and frightened. What he does say is, “It… it felt okay. I didn’t mind.”

“Didn’t mind?”

“I—it wasn’t my favorite,” Bucky admits. “I liked you. I liked looking at you and you holding me. I just, um. I didn’t love the actual action.” He bites his lip. “But I didn’t hate it, either. Not at all. It actually was way better than I expected it to be.”

“Thanks for telling me, love,” Steve says. “You… if you don’t want to, we don’t ever have to do it, yeah? I won’t mind.”

“Just… I, um, don’t feel ready to do it every week or anything. Any of it.” He pauses. “But… it was good. All of it was good.”

“I’m so glad, baby,” Steve whispers.

Bucky tilts his head back to kiss Steve’s cheek and ends up missing. He kisses his chin. “Thank you for making this stuff, um. It’s never easy for me, but you make it… you make it good.”

Steve smiles at him, overwhelmed by all Bucky is, by the trust and privilege he is putting into Steve’s hands, by all of his endless, impossible bravery. “Bucky,” Steve whispers, “thank you for letting me.”

Bucky lifts their entwined hands to kiss Steve’s fingers. Steve holds him and on his other side, Penny nestles her head into his lap, and he drifts off wrapped in affection and safety.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr, thank you for your beautiful beautiful comments and messages i love you all


	31. thirty-one

The thing about these bursts of success with sex is that they give way to gigantic, irrational hope. Afterwards, laying next to Steve, warm and protected as Steve rubs his back, Bucky will think, _that worked, that felt good, this is good_ and the conviction that all he needed was one good experience, or two, or three. At this point, he is aware that he’s being delusional. Even that night, he’s able to recognize that what they’d done, while wonderful, took more out of him than it should have. The adrenaline has left him very tired and sated, and he understands that that is not the normal response to a handjob, these things are not yet standard or easy for him no matter how much he wants them to be.

Bucky knows Steve experiences the hope too, even though he will go to his grave telling Bucky sex doesn’t make a difference to him. The next morning, they lie in bed for fifteen minutes kissing the way they would if they were about to have lazy morning sex, moving like warm honey, breaking apart to smile and then kiss again. Pale morning light spills in, sending individual specks of dust to twinkle in the air, rising up in a huff when they move their weight under the comforter. Even though Steve says nothing and doesn’t do anything to test the waters, Bucky knows he is wondering how far this, too, will go. When Bucky pulls back, hands on his face, and asks if he wants to make breakfast, Steve smiles and says yes and Bucky thinks he registers a momentary flicker of resignation in his face, or maybe he is imagining things.

Bucky is trying to detach himself from the hope that relearning sex will be like learning how to walk or swim or ride a bike—once he has it, he has it forever, a path unfolding in front of him, new sections opening up to him that he can visit and revisit forever with no trouble. He is finding it more like skipping rocks. Endless effort, endless trials until it works, briefly and perfectly skimming off the water and then untethered in the air until it lands again, or sinks and needs to be restarted.

The moments when it is good, it is _so good._ It’s just that they are that, moments, small and rare as the glitter of diamonds in a vast dark rock.

He tries to explain that to Steve the next night, lying in bed facing him but not looking at him. Steve listens, running his hand up Bucky’s arm as he talks, voice trembling a little, then kisses his cheek, pulls him close, and promises him he knows, he has no expectations, he can wait months or years or however long Bucky needs.

But Bucky wonders if he’s being more selfish by testing these things out, if a handjob is fueling Steve’s hope for nothing. He still oscillates between wanting to have sex with Steve, thinking it is there, close to him as a possibility, and feeling repulsed by the thought of sex, ever. He knows Steve, impossibly good and patient as he is, wants to get there, believes they will get there, even as he assures Bucky it’s okay if they don’t. 

Sometimes Bucky is afraid that for Steve, their relationship is a series of dashed hopes and disappointments. He has had to adjust to the realization that their relationship looks very different than it had in high school, no matter the angle it is looked at from, the two of them inside of it or everyone else outside. He has recalibrated his norms in every way imaginable for Bucky, has sacrificed sleep and sex and work for him, has never been anything but patient even when he had every right and reason to be otherwise. There must be a limit, Bucky thinks, a number of frustrations that will send Steve over the edge, a number of let downs. Was he leading Steve on by allowing anything at all to happen between them? He is afraid he will have shaken loose something in Steve, some expectation or desire that, even with all of his goodness, he is tired of pushing aside for Bucky.

But a few weeks go by, and Steve doesn’t push him for anything else. Steve gives him no indication that anything at all has changed, and the anxiety ebbs into its usual constant thrum, no worse than it ever is. They go on as they have been, classes and date nights and dinners with friends, everything unfolding with as much ease as it ever has.

One night, they are on the couch together. Steve has his arm over Bucky’s shoulders and is reading something on his laptop while Bucky clicks through Netflix on their tv.

“When we’re in LA—” Steve begins, about to propose a hotel or restaurant, but Bucky snaps his head up and says, “Wait, when is that?”

“Second week of June. The ninth to the sixteenth.”

Bucky bites his lip. “I have class.”

“Oh.” Steve blinks. “Shit. I didn’t think of that.”

An unusual silence falls between them, so pathetically helpless that they both laugh. “How long is it?” Bucky asks.

“A week”

Bucky swallows, and Steve scratches his neck. They share a half-smile.

“Well,” Bucky says. “I mean. Most couples have to be away from each other for a time.”

“Seven days is nothing,” Steve adds, but they are both unconvinced. Anxiously, Bucky lays his head on Steve’s shoulder. They haven’t even spent a weekend away from each other in the last year. Maybe that is a problem, but Bucky thinks they have earned the right to some clinginess.

“It’ll make sure we aren’t problematically codependent,” Bucky says half-heartedly. Steve snorts, then kisses his hair.

“Absence does make the heart grow fonder,” Steve replies.

“Like my heart could be any fonder of you.”

Steve shuts his laptop so he can wrap both arms around Bucky. “Sorry, baby, I can’t believe that didn’t occur to me.”

“No, I think you scheduled it before I even signed up. You should obviously not plan your work around me.”

Steve kisses his forehead again. The prospect of a week in California has grown significantly less appealing without Bucky. “Damn it.”

“It’s three weeks away, anyway,” Bucky says, convincing himself. Steve nods. “Maybe,” Bucky suggests, a little meekly. “Maybe we should go to Long Island this weekend.” Steve raises an eyebrow. “I mean, it’s nice and we’re both not doing anything and, um, now we’ve got this coming up and we haven’t gone in a while.”

“Yeah?” Steve says, surprised. Bucky shrugs.

“Only if you want to.”

Steve laughs, drawing Bucky into his arms to kiss the top of his head. “I’d love to go to Montauk with you this weekend. Let’s book a hotel.”

They do. It is the first truly warm weekend of the year. They’ve come out here a few times, twice in high school and twice last summer, once before the trial and once after, both trips restricted by the almost constant heaviness clinging to them like wet fabric. This is not like that. The sky is a bright and unyielding cornflower blue, the sun bouncing off of their windshield like the white edge of a razor as they drive but softening into a welcoming buttery haze when they get closer.

They are staying at an extremely nice hotel. It requires driving through white gates and onto property that sits on the beach. They are the youngest people there, staying among older Wall Street couples or trust fund graduate students celebrating the end of term on their rich parents' dime. Bucky is a little tense, the way he always tends to be around this kind of luxury, but Steve keeps holding his hand and he settles into the room and by the time they’re on the beach he has relaxed entirely.

Bucky keeps his shirt on on the beach, but he isn’t bothered by it. He looks utterly adorable, Steve thinks, in a bright yellow tee shirt of Steve’s that is too big for him. He is the brightest thing Steve’s ever seen, putting to shame the sun at its apex and its diamond glitter of the ocean. The water is terribly cold, sending tiny needles through their whole bodies, but Steve still wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist and kisses him as waves rise around them to make him laugh, then lays beside him in the sun and holds him as warmth returns to them.

Bucky kisses Steve, one hand light on the side of his neck, light and long. Steve pulls back after several pleasant seconds and raises an eyebrow. “No concern for other beachgoers, huh?”

“There’s no one here,” Bucky giggles. Steve kisses him again, leaning over him so his body presses gently into the sand, imprinting in the shape of the two of them, close. Steve’s skin tastes like salt but it isn’t gross. Bucky’s hand tangles in his still-damp hair.

Steve is shamefully aware how uncomplicatedly attracted to Bucky he is right now. It is maybe partially being here, this place that they have always been happy at, this place that exists as a landmark in his mind for sex. It is probably the fact that Bucky, slightly sunburnt, tee shirt damp and skin warm, looks so lovely it twists a key, fast and hard in Steve’s chest, and a rush of adoration and gratitude and yes, attraction pour over him. They kiss so slowly and deeply that Steve thinks their mouths could reshape themselves to accommodate each other’s forever, as if they are trying to return to some deeply right former existence where they had been one single piece.

Steve is the one who stops first, because he is growing too aroused to go on. He kisses Bucky’s forehead and then rolls off of him, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him into a clumsy horizontal hug, their limbs too tight and raw to know who’s is who’s. 

Bucky plucks Steve’s sunglasses off and puts them on. Two other people have materialized, a middle aged couple who cast them an irritated glance, scandalized by the affection, and head further down the beach.

“Oops,” Bucky says, nuzzling his face into Steve’s neck and laughing, the vibrations of it running straight to Steve’s heart.

“Who cares about them,” Steve says mildly, kissing Bucky’s forehead again.

“Married and can’t stand each other?”

“Oh, absolutely. Haven’t had sex in like seven years.”

Bucky tenses a little, and Steve bites his lip, furious at himself. “She’s sleeping with a coworker,” Bucky adds, and Steve laughs, relieved, before smoothing a hand over his hair.

“She’s telling him on this trip,” he says, and Bucky eases up, his full weight laid on Steve again.

“You’re my best friend,” Bucky says to him, lifting his head enough to look at Steve.

Steve laughs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Bucky brushes sand off of Steve’s cheek, then kisses it. “I was gonna say I love you, ‘cause I do, but I say that all the time, so.”

“You hear that, Penny?” Steve says. She perks up at her name. “ _I’m_ his best friend.”

“Human best friend!” Bucky corrects indignantly. “No one replaces you, Penny.”

Steve kisses his nose. “Well, you’re also my best friend.”

Montauk is a beach town that is really one single beach but that has been divided up among various properties and owners so only certain parts of it are accessible to everyone. For dinner, they drive to a cheap taco truck that has been there since they first came in high school and eat in one of the beaches that is open for access, the coast dotted with colorful umbrellas, surfers weaving through the water. They watch the water for a long time, then walk back into town and buy ice cream from a new place, the signs of gentrification out here growing more and more obvious, before heading back to their car to drive to their hotel. The road is empty and the air is warm, filling their car with comfortable ocean-swept air and quiet, Fleetwood Mac faint on the radio.

The road is shaky, oscillating with hills and indents. Steve holds Bucky’s hand and drives one-handed.

“Steve?” Bucky says. “Pull in up here.”

Steve smiles across at him. “Yeah?”

Up ahead of them is the motel they stayed at as teenagers, run-down as it has ever been, somehow still standing among the resorts and cafes and trendy bars popping rapidly up. Some places hold such significance that they seem to carry their own gravity, that the laws of physics seem to change when you approach them, flooding you with such memory that there must be a change of chemistry in your surroundings. This motel, with its cheap stripped paint and parking lot populated by a single beat up Volvo and dirty sign advertising free wifi, occupies a vivid and aching space in Bucky’s chest. It has turned bittersweet over the years, an almost tragic tinge to it now, but mostly, he looks at it and is thrust wildly back into the excitement of being seventeen and being alone, really alone with Steve for the first time, this cheap, pretend glimpse of their future.

They smile at each other almost shyly, pale in the cheap fluorescent light. “Can you believe this place is still here?” Steve says, laughing a little. 

“Of course,” Bucky says, “they’ve cornered the market for kids needing somewhere cheap that doesn’t need IDs.”

Steve grins. “I’m extremely fond of them, though.”

“Maybe we should’ve stayed here,” Bucky says dryly.

“Not that fond,” Steve says, and Bucky bursts out laughing.

It is a beautiful moment in a day filled only with beautiful moments. It fills Bucky with vivid, tumultuous nostalgia for that time, so vibrant it appears in his reach, the very energy they’d harnessed that night, the love and trust and thrill that seems to be preserved there from what they’d done together, the way it had felt like they were creating something when they destroyed all of the space separating them. It is that, among all of the goodness of this day, that makes Bucky, after they have showered the beach off of them, touch Steve’s face in bed and say the following.

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

Bucky inhales, the air fracturing in his throat in nerves and anticipation. “I want—I think I want to try tonight. Having sex.”

Steve blinks, then tries to pretend he is not bewildered. “I—Buck—we don’t have to—”

“I know,” Bucky says softly. “Um. Do you want to?”

“I—I mean, only if you want to, yeah, but you don’t have to—”

“I wanna try, Steve.”

Steve scans his face very carefully. There is a slight tremor in his hands where he’s touching Bucky, like he’s been handed something very fragile and told to throw it in the air and catch it. “We don’t—We don’t have anything…”

Bucky’s cheeks flush with heat; he looks away. “I brought stuff,” he whispers. “Just… just in case.”

Under his hand, he feels Steve’s breath recede sharply into his chest. “Buck, are you—are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“We really don’t have to—”

“Yeah, I know. I wanna try.”

He manages to look at Steve’s face again; his cheeks are tinged pink, eyes bright. “I—okay. Yeah. Yeah, of course. I just—you know it’s okay if it doesn’t work, right? You can tell me to stop anytime, and I will.”

“I know.”

Steve’s smile is so soft. Bucky kisses him quickly.

“Um,” Bucky says. “I’m gonna—gonna get it.”

“Okay.” Steve breathes.

Bucky reluctantly extracts himself from Steve’s side to dig through his bag. Buried at the bottom is a tube of Ky and a box of condoms that he’d bought the day before, hands shaking at the self checkout in CVS, a bottle of nail polish and a bag of chips tossed in as if anyone was watching him. It gives him some comfort that Steve is nervous too; even from a few feet away from the bed, Bucky can see his hands shaking, his breathing a little faster than usual.

He gets Penny to lie down on her bed in the bathroom, which is more than big enough to be comfortable for her. Steve is sitting up in bed and Bucky joins him, close against his side, reaching over to squeeze his hand.

“I love you,” Steve tells him.

“I love you, too,” Bucky whispers.

Steve kisses him, a little hungrier than usual, a little more heat behind it. For a long time, they only do that, kiss in this large soft bed with the sound of the ocean faint in the distance. Bucky thinks of him and Steve as teenagers, five or so miles away from this very hotel in a much uglier room doing almost this exact thing, the same quiver of anticipation and nerves thrumming between them, and it comforts him some, the idea that this will be exactly like that. It is easier if he imagines that they can embody that again, back when sex was uncomplicated and untainted, when it existed before him as something shiny and extravagant that he could keep discovering with Steve, that would always be good and safe.

“You okay?” Steve asks him. His hand moves over Bucky’s cheek in an oval. Bucky nods. “I’m gonna take my shirt off, okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers. Steve sits up, pulling his tee off and tossing it somewhere unimportant. Steve smiles, almost shyly. Bucky kisses his collarbone, pressing his forehead against Steve’s shoulder for a moment.

“Can I—Can I take yours off?”

Bucky nods, a very slight shock of pure anxiety piercing him. He lets Steve do it anyway. He feels very aware of his shortcomings, staring at Steve’s objectively perfect body. It feels hard to believe they are the same species.

But Steve, very gently, kisses his neck and shoulders and chest, kissing over the scars and around them with such tenderness and focus and absolutely no hesitation, and it calms Bucky down. He tries to picture clean, bright light spilling inside him right beneath where Steve’s lips meet his skin, cleaning what’s dirty and hurt, making this okay. He doesn’t say anything, just breathes shakily as Steve makes him briefly good again.

“You’re so beautiful,” Steve tells him, lifting his head. Bucky thinks he might get choked up if he responds and he doesn’t want that, so he kisses Steve on the mouth. “You still okay, baby?”

Bucky nods. Steve hesitates, fingers curling in against Bucky’s back.

“Bucky, babe? Can I get some verbal confirmation?”

“Yeah,” Bucky manages. “I’m okay.”

Steve has begun rubbing circles over his back. Bucky tries to reduce himself to that, the perfectly concentrated comfort of that movement. “Are you sure, Buck? We can stop, we can take a break—”

Bucky kisses him lightly. “I’m good,” he says. He kisses Steve’s neck. “Really.”

“Okay,” Steve whispers, “tell me if you need anything, okay, baby?”

Ignoring the first spark of dread is like trying to put out a fire by looking away. It’s just a flame at first, smaller than a thumbnail, stopped by water or a hard enough gust of wind, no harm done. Instead, Bucky pretends it is not there. It will vanish, he thinks, he just has to push through it, and while he is pretending not to feel the terrible twist of something very close to fear, it catches on everything around it and burns. 

But he pushes through it. _You wanted this_ , he scolds himself, _you still want this. Just get through this, it’ll pass, it’ll be fine._

Steve, at some point, reaches under Bucky’s sweats, waits for him to agree, and tugs them down. He kisses Bucky as he does it, kisses his neck and collarbone and stomach, which helps, but then they are close and exposed, both in boxers, the air conditioning feeling like the drag of a razor over all of Bucky’s skin, and he begins to feel very dizzy.

Steve’s hand on his thigh, then higher. When he was touched like that before, he used to imagine his body vanishing. It was dissociation, but it was a very intentional form of it. He tried to imagine the line where his body met the air wavering and then breaking, and all of his form and color spilling out of it, dissolving like smoke, becoming so thin and small he could float into nothingness. His body, he told himself, was nothing but a complicated collection of molecules. Neither was the body on top of him. They were no different then any other two things that touched each other. You could break down a table and chair and it would all be the same, therefore, the way he was being handled didn’t matter, even though of course it did, a table and chair were not capable of brutality or shame or terror.

He finds himself beginning to think that way right now. He finds himself wanting to stay still, to participate in this as little as possible. 

“Steve,” he whimpers, “Steve, no, stop, I don’t want to, I don’t.” He has not even finished speaking when Steve has moved off of him. He feels the mattress depress under the motion and realizes Steve has moved to his left very calmly.

“Hey,” Steve says, “hey, Buck. It’s okay, you’re okay. I’m not gonna hurt you, babe. It’s just me. Take a breath.” He tries, and finds the air tattered in his throat. Every cell in his body feels burnt through with terrible anticipation, like driving your car fast and carelessly only to realize the breaks have been cut and you’re hurdling down the wrong side of the highway. “Bucky,” Steve says. “Bucky, I’m not leaving, okay? I’m just gonna go get Penny. I’ll be right back.”

Bucky feels himself nod. Sure enough, Penny returns less than thirty seconds later and jumps up to see him, nuzzling him as he puts shaking, lead-heavy arms around her and breathes.

Steve returns too, quietly. He has put a tee shirt back on, which makes Bucky feel extremely exposed, the lashes on his back sharper than usual. He winces and glances around; Steve, seeing him, produces Bucky’s shirt out of thin air and hands it to him. 

Bucky pulls it on, shuts his eyes, and counts to ten. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and makes himself look at Steve.

Steve shakes his head right away. “You don’t have to be sorry, Buck.”

He wishes Steve would hold him, but he doesn’t know how to ask. “I’m being unfair.”

Another, firmer shake of his head. “Buck, you’re allowed to change your mind. Baby, look at me.” Steve reaches his hand out, then hesitates until Bucky tilts his cheek into Steve’s palm. “It’s okay. You have nothing to apologize for.”

“You’re disappointed,” Bucky whispers.

A fast beat of quiet; the waves keep crashing and receding and breaking again. Bucky doesn’t know how the ocean keeps rebuilding itself.

“No,” Steve says, “Buck, I’m not. I don’t want to do anything that you don’t want. I’m glad you told me.”

“I’m sorry I ruined tonight.”

“Is it okay if I put my arms around you?” Steve asks quietly. Bucky nods, humiliatingly relieved, and Steve pulls Bucky against his chest. “You didn’t ruin anything, baby,” Steve says quietly. “You’re always allowed to change your mind. It’s so, so okay. We can watch a movie or go for a walk or lie down.”

Bucky makes a small, non committal noise. The room is still reestablishing itself, coming back together like a time lapse of color and shape, and it is hard to imagine moving or standing or not being in Steve’s arms.

“I did,” he hears himself say, and realizes how distraught he is. “Oh, god, Steve, I’m so sorry, I made you think we could do it and I fucked up your night—”

“Sh,” Steve says gently, “sh, Buck, you didn’t ruin anything. It’s okay, it’s all okay, I’m not angry at all, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong, baby. We still have this whole weekend and we still have tonight.” Bucky is trembling terribly against him. Steve kisses the side of his head, and he chokes out a sob. “Wanna order room service?” Steve asks suddenly.

The question is such that Bucky looks up, blinking tears back, and huffs out a weak laugh. “What?”

“I just—we ate a while ago and you’re shaking and if—if the adrenaline made you hungry, you should eat. And besides, we are paying an insane amount for this place. Might as well use their twenty-four hour room service.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, “you don’t have to do this.”

Steve squeezes his hands once. “I want to. And also, some of their food looked fucking good.”

Bucky holds onto him for another moment. “Okay,” he says quietly.

They order sundaes and truffle fries and eat them off a tray on the bed while watching a mediocre romance movie on demand that they’d been meaning to see, Penny licking their fingers. By then, Bucky has almost completely calmed down, the roar of panic minimized to a faint buzz that he can almost ignore. During the sex scene, he tenses a little, but Steve keeps rubbing his back without a beat of hesitation and he closes his eyes and it passes without incident. When the finale music has swelled behind a kiss and they have emptied their plates of overpriced room service and set it on the bedside table, Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky exhales, pressing back into him. Steve kisses his shoulder.

“Buck? Do you wanna talk about it?”

Bucky winces. “No. But I guess we should.”

Steve moves his hand in an infinity over Bucky’s back. “If you’re tired, we can sleep.”

Bucky shakes his head. This will be easier now, before the fact of it curdles inside him untouched, waking him up in the middle of the night choked with shame. “It wasn’t anything you did,” he says quietly. “I just—I thought—I did want to, but then we were getting close and I was picturing us actually having sex and I—I just freaked, I don’t know. I’m so stupid, it’s—it’s all okay in theory, but I guess it was just abstract and as soon as—as soon as it became real I just couldn’t not feel like—like I used to feel before sex.” He flinches. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again, voice small.

Steve sighs, quiet and defeated. “Buck, baby, you don’t have to be sorry. We tried something and it didn’t work. That is so, so okay. That’s all there is to it.” When Bucky doesn’t say anything else, Steve leans in and kisses his forehead. “I’m so sorry it felt scary, babe.”

“No,” Bucky whispers, “Steve, please don’t be sorry. You didn’t do anything.” Steve is looking at him with extreme gentleness cut with a terrible flash of guilt, and Bucky reaches up to cup his face. “Stevie, please. You’re so perfect.”

Steve smiles tiredly, tilting his head to kiss Bucky’s palm. “I just want you to feel safe when we’re doing this stuff, baby. That matters more to me than anything else.”

“I do,” Bucky insists, “I do, I promise. It’s just—this is just really hard for me.” His voice goes so quiet.

“I know,” Steve says sadly. “You’re doing so good, baby. I’m so proud of you. I just—” He thinks, then kisses Bucky’s hand again. “You’re always, always safe with me,” he says, very softly.

“I know,” Bucky whispers, “I know.”

Steve opens his arms and Bucky buries himself against his chest, tucking himself in close enough that Steve’s heartbeat swallows the quiet roar of the ocean. It is impossible to him that this is his reality, that he is about to fall asleep in a room in a beach club in the arms of a person who loves him and is comforting him even after he wrecked their night not even for the first time. The patience Steve employs with him, always, seems bottomless and unconditional; every time he thinks it will be spent Steve is there, forgiving and safe. It is unimaginable that the same world that created Steve had created Alexander, that created his parents had created Wanda and Scott, that created Brock had created Carol and Maria and Sam and Natasha. He closes his eyes and tilts his head into Steve’s neck. He doesn’t understand why cruelty in its most extreme is so much easier to accept than tenderness, but even now, the way he is being treated feels like something reserved for only truly, remarkably good people. Like Steve.

He feels unbearably tired, but underneath that, he feels lucky in a way that overwhelms him. He feels so lucky is he almost ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers again, because he is too exhausted and fragile to express his gratitude in any other way. “Thank you, Steve.”

He feels Steve’s cool hand sweep his hair back before Steve kisses his forehead. “No need, baby. I love you so much.”

After Bucky has been asleep for a good forty minutes, Steve slips out of bed to stand on the balcony and breathe until he tastes salt.

It’s an unfair thought to him and to Bucky, but he can never not blame himself when this happens. He thinks about how he should have been gentler or slower or checked in more. It terrifies him that something he did could have scared Bucky out of wanting to try something new, that he has been handed this precious, delicate trust and didn’t tend to it correctly. It’s not a logical thought, exactly, or at least not a true one, but it always strikes him anyway. 

_You’re disappointed_ , Bucky had whispered, and shame flushes Steve because he had been. He had been almost electrified with excitement while they’d been kissing, so flooded with anticipation that he’d felt like a fucking teenager, utterly in awe of Bucky and what he thought was about to happen between them. It had been a selfish disappointment, his loss of one night of sex compared to the panic that electrified Bucky, but it had come over him regardless. He feels sick thinking about it, wondering if that made him like the men Bucky had been hurt by, if they had ever felt that same sting of loss right before they decided what they wanted mattered more than Bucky.

_But I stopped_ , Steve thinks, and blinks the sting of salt from his eyes. _I would never, ever, ever do that to him._

He knows Bucky wonders irrationally if he is enough for Steve. He is, of course. He is the ground in which every good thing in Steve’s life is built on. But it is often in the moments like this, when Steve, indirect and unintentional as it may have been, shakes loose this terror in Bucky that he wonders the same thing. Who is he to think he knows what he’s doing when it comes to these things? Shouldn’t he have caught it the second Bucky started having doubts? Is Bucky just exceptionally good at hiding his unhappiness, or was Steve choosing not to see it? Was he behaving the way all of those faceless, nameless men who had pretended what they were doing was acceptable had? He presses his hands briefly over his face at the thought. Sometimes, he is frightened by the power he could have over Bucky if he were a bad person. The idea that he could hurt Bucky unintentionally terrifies him, that Bucky will one day stop believing that he doesn’t owe Steve sex and he will allow Steve to do to him things that make him feel like he is being ground into dust. Had that been what was happening tonight? Had he wanted to have sex at all? Or did he just think he was tolerating it until he realized it was too unbearable to grit his teeth through.

He thinks about calling Henry and relaying these anxieties, but it’s late and he’s tired and it can be discussed just as easily and more coherently during this week’s appointment. 

He waits outside until the initial wave of shame and anxiety has ebbed and he is able to talk himself down. These moments, however stressful they are, do not define their relationship. He loves Bucky, he’d never hurt him, and most of the time Bucky knows that. They have gotten through harder things together; this is no different.

He heads back inside. When he lies down again, Bucky nestles himself right into Steve’s side and Steve feels his heart sigh and settle in his chest. _We’re okay,_ he repeats to himself, _we are always okay._

***

They have a longer, better conversation about it on the beach the next day. They’re walking, holding hands, Penny off leash and without her vest so she can run up and down the waves trying to catch them before circling back. Bucky has been a little subdued all day. It’s mid-afternoon, prime beach time, but they’ve been walking long enough that the crowd has thinned out to no one and the area they’ve reached is rockier, walled off by ancient, jagged beach cliffs on one side of them and rougher waves on the other.

“Are you alright?” Steve asks him, squeezing his hand. It is not his most tactful way of bringing it up, but he’s a little concerned.

Bucky nods, but doesn’t say anything for a few beats. “It’s okay if you’re mad at me,” he finally says. “I would be.”

Steve’s chest twists itself into a small, uncomfortable knot. “I’m not mad, Buck. Do I seem mad?”

Bucky shakes his head, but whispers, “I’d get it if you were, though. I feel, um. Really shitty about it.”

Steve squeezes his hand. “You don’t have to, baby. It’s not a big deal, I promise.”

“I am trying, Steve.” He sounds almost desperate.

“Bucky—” Steve begins, then breaks off, runs a hand through his hair, and starts again. “Bucky, I know. But I don’t want you to, um, to try and push yourself towards something you don’t want, if that’s what you’re doing, okay? It’s not like I’m just… waiting until you can tolerate it without hating it.” There is a rare, uncomfortable pause. The shriek of seagulls puts Steve on edge. “Bucky, if you aren’t interested in having sex, I—we don’t have to think about it, at all.” It hits him now, with a force that could topple him over, that maybe Bucky doesn’t want this the way Steve believes he does, maybe he has been sickened with every sexual thing that has happened between them but he is putting himself through it anyway. “Do you?”

“Yes,” Bucky says. He stops walking and reaches for Steve’s other hand. “Steve, I want it so fucking much, I just—this stuff can never just be easy for me.” His voice quivers. “Um. Steve, I don’t—I don’t know what’s gonna happen with all of this, but, um, have you really thought about if this doesn’t get easier for me? Like, have you really considered what that will be like for you?”

“Buck,” Steve says, trying for lightness, “this isn’t a terminal illness, babe.” Bucky doesn’t laugh, and Steve immediately regrets it. “Baby. I know. I know and I’ve told you that’s okay and I want you to believe me. There is nothing that would make me not want to be with you.”

Bucky thinks about this. They’ve started walking again; they both watch the sand burying itself under their weight.

“Sometimes I worry that—that you don’t think about how much you give up for me.” Bucky’s voice is very quiet. “I know you love me, but I just… I don’t want you to not know what you’ve gotten into.”

“Bucky,” Steve says softly, “I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life because of you.” Bucky smiles towards the sand. “I love you, I’m so proud of you. Can you trust me enough to believe me when I tell you all of that matters more to me than sex?”

Bucky blushes faintly. “Of course I trust you, Steve. I just think…” He trails off, sounding slightly ashamed. “I’m sorry. I do trust you. None of this is about you, you know.”

Steve stops again, lifting Bucky’s hand and kissing his knuckles. “You’re stuck with me ‘till the end of the line, you know.”

Bucky hugs Steve, burying his face in his neck and shuddering. Steve holds him, rocking along with the endless, rhythmic whir of saltwater as they stand there, clinging to each other until Steve pulls back, kisses Bucky’s cheek noisily, and takes his hand again.

***

They stay out late that night. They don’t mean to, since frankly, their social lives are confined to their best friends and most of the time spent with them is in their apartments or having meals together, none of which ever become the raging all-nighters that a lot of their age group is accustomed to.

But they do stay out late that night, the heaviness of earlier having lifted, tucked into the corner of a cozy beach dock bar drinking exotic fruity beverages that make them comfortably tipsy. It is warm, and the place is lit up by twinkling silver exposed bulbs that shimmer over the ocean like little smears of planets and a live band that sings covers of Neil Young and Springsteen and U2. There are people dancing, and Bucky lets Steve pull him to his feet and into his arms among them, reserving a small circle to sway and step lazily in, unnoticed and unworried by the people around them. They stay until one thirty, at which point the drinks have long worn off enough for them to drive up the road into their hotel, dark and quiet in the lobby as if to shame anyone coming in at this hour. They don’t care. They hurry in, holding hands and laughing, giving a quick polite wave to the woman at the front desk, high with the reality of the teenage fantasy of being able to spend a night out drinking and dancing with the person you love and no one else you need to return to.

They’re on their way back to the room when Steve stops, squeezing Bucky’s arm. “Wait,” he says, “let’s check out the pool.”

The pool in their hotel is open twenty-four hours, but it’s safe to assume it rarely gets used after eight. When they swipe their card and enter, it’s dark and empty, the moon shimmering through glass over a long block of turquoise water. Around them, expensive plants with fan shaped leaves cast themselves in silhouette, flickering against the silver light.

“You feel like a swim?” Steve asks, grinning.

“We should get our suits.”

Steve cocks his head. “Or not.”

Bucky snorts. Steve, smirking, begins to strip to his boxers. “C’mon. No one will ever know.”

“You’re gonna get us both arrested someday,” Bucky tells him, but shakes his head, tells Penny to sit, and removes his shoes.

Bucky leaves his shirt on, not wanting yet to feel vulnerable the way he had last night. Steve doesn’t mind. They jump in, their voices too-loud and vaguely distorted in the long, empty room, bouncing back towards them as they shiver a little and laugh. Steve is holding Bucky close. He kisses Bucky’s cheek and is left with a mild taste of chlorine. There are moments that can make you feel very young, like the world is shimmering with opportunity and experiences waiting to dazzle you. Bucky studies Steve, his face lit light blue as he smiles, breathtakingly, otherworldly beautiful, and he kisses him because words fail the vastness of the two of them, gigantic in the face of the rest of the world. The belief that everything will be okay deserves its own emotion, Bucky thinks. No words come close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr 
> 
> you all amaze me with your kindness every day :)


	32. thirty-two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big shoutout to cia for helping me w this chapter and henry for giving me constant inspiration for this story if i got paid for this you would both get royalties

A morning one week before Steve has to leave for LA, Bucky is baking muffins while Steve is on a run when his phone lights up with an email. He glances at it, then straightens up; one of the magazines he submitted to is letting him know that they’ve reached a decision on whether to feature his piece.

He wipes flour off trembling hands and opens the email.

_Dear Bucky,_

_Congratulations! Your piece has been chosen to be featured in our July issue. We were impressed by your writing and want to commend you—it was an extremely competitive pool of submissions that your story was selected from._

Bucky blinks several times. There is more to the email, but he keeps reading the first three sentences, basking in it. Eventually, he scans the rest— _let us know if you do not want to be featured anymore… if you are still interested, we will send some suggested edits…_

“Oh my god,” he says out loud, and laughs. Penny looks expectantly at him. “Pen, they’re gonna publish my story,” Bucky says, bending down to scratch her. She licks his nose, happy that he is happy.

He stays there, rendered useless with excitement for a few more minutes until Steve comes in. Wordlessly, Bucky hands him his phone; Steve reads it, eyes going wide, and then looks up.

“Buck!” Steve very nearly shouts. “That’s so fucking amazing!” They crash into a hug, both laughing, so happy that Steve lifts him up a little. “Oh, my god. You should be so proud of yourself. I’m so proud of you, oh my god. We gotta celebrate. Fucking _Harpers_.”

Bucky laughs, dazed, allowing himself this joy and pride for the time being. “I can’t believe this.”

Steve kisses his cheek. “I can, you’re incredible.” He bounces a little, making Bucky giggle. “We’re celebrating tonight. Wherever you want.” He kisses Bucky again, cupping his face. 

Bucky laughs, a little incredulous, flooded with the still slightly foreign sensation of being proud of himself. “Oh, my god,” he says again.

***

The night before Steve leaves, they order takeout and then burrow onto the couch after eating, kissing lazily in pajamas, faint string lights twinkling above them. Steve kisses Bucky’s face to make him laugh, hands light on his shoulder, no indication of going any further. 

“What time are you leaving tomorrow?” Bucky asks, hating the words. Their faces are close, and his nose brushes Steve’s cheek.

Steve sighs.“Nine thirty?”

“Really?”

“What?”

“You made us get to the airport four hours before our Spain flight.”

“Well, I wanted to go to Spain. Missing that flight would have been a tragedy.”

Later, once they have been asleep several hours, which is less than ideal for both of them. It’s worse than it’s been in a while. Very occasionally, he will have nightmares re-experiencing some event that he’d almost forgotten, buried beneath the agony of the moment or drugs or alcohol that he’d been given, only faintly fleshed out in his mind, and then one night, it will be stirred up like sediment layers at the bottom of a lake, kicking up grime and poison.

Tonight is one of those. He dreams that Alexander is fucking him and hitting him, and he has been knocked unconscious with pain. When he starts to come back, Alexander presses something sharp into his side and snarls, “You don’t get to pass out when you’re being punished, James,” and yanks his hair back.

He wakes Steve up thrashing, and when Steve is able to shake him awake he looks pale and frightened. “Buck—“ Steve starts, probably about to say something soothing, but Bucky’s stomach constricts and he barely makes it to the bathroom before he kneels in front of the toilet and gets sick. Steve’s there right away, holding his hair back and rubbing his back, telling him to breathe, it’s okay, can he get him anything? He shakes his head and buries his face in Steve’s shoulder and sobs for a long time while Steve rubs his back and shushes him like he doesn’t have to be up and out in four hours.

“I wanna take a shower,” he whispers, after some time. It was one of the dreams that sticks to him like insects crawling up and down his skin. He is shaking.

“Alone, or want me to come?” Steve asks him patiently, smoothing a hand over his hair.

“You don’t have to come,” Bucky whispers, even though he doesn’t want Steve to leave him alone. “You should rest.”

“Sh,” Steve says, “baby, I don’t mind. Do you want me to come?”

Bucky nods, too tired to be ashamed.

In the shower, Steve washes Bucky’s hair for him while he leans against Steve and tries to stop shivering. “Sorry,” Bucky whispers, but what he really wants to say is _I don’t want you to go._ He doesn’t, because he thinks there is probably quite a good chance Steve would cancel the whole trip if he said that and he does not want to be the reason for that. He closes his eyes and focuses on Steve’s hands, moving gently over his hair.

“Sh. Don’t be sorry.”

Bucky hugs him closer, face burrowed into Steve’s neck. Steve holds him, keeping them both steady under the spray, pressing kisses onto his head. By the time they get back into bed, it’s already three, and even though Bucky has stopped trembling, he is limp and exhausted with a headache and he needs Steve’s arms around him in order to fall into a restless sleep.

***

“A week,” Steve says to Bucky.

It’s nine thirty am, and Steve’s waiting for a car to the airport. Bucky has an embarrassing pit of despair in his stomach. He knows a week is nothing, most couples are apart from each other much more for longer periods of time, but he hates the idea of being alone for seven days. He is still listless and unsettled from the nightmare before; he is going to have to bring it up in therapy this week.

“Exactly,” he says weakly. Steve smiles, his heart not in it. Neither of them are thrilled by the prospect. Steve kisses him then hugs him; they both hang on for a few moments longer than usual. 

“I love you,” Bucky says, “let me know you make your flight.”

“Will do.” Steve kisses him again, once on the mouth then on the cheek, then bends down to give Penny a scratch. “I love you, too.” Steve blows him a kiss as he gets into the cab. Bucky smiles, then stands there until the car disappears around the corner.  
***

Steve closes his eyes on the plane, fatigue suddenly sweeping him, the lack of sleep the night before and the frantic energy of JFK security catching up. He’s got two days, ridiculously, on a movie set. After that he’s got four days painting a permanent installation at The Broad, and then, the day after that, flying home. It is unpleasantly familiar, getting off a plane alone and taking a car to a hotel he doesn’t know. He’s already texted Bucky that he landed, but he sends another message letting him know he misses him and then looks out the window. He hates having left Bucky after a bad night. He knows Bucky can take care of himself, but the thought of Bucky suffering alone always makes him feel dizzy. 

Steve knows he sometimes thinks of Bucky as fragile, maybe more so than is fair. Bucky, he knows, can take care of himself, has survived endlessly worse things than being alone in their beautiful home with his dog and his friends for a week with Steve a phone call away. It’s just that he doesn’t like the thought of Bucky feeling miserable out of reach. He has suffered so much alone; the thought of him ever facing any hardship again, even a nightmare or a generically bad day, without someone to hold and soothe him feels extraordinarily unfair, like overkill from the universe. He hates to think of Bucky, rattled from a nightmare, alone in their living room trying to shake it.

There is also, more irrationally, the fear that something worse will descend. This, he knows, is where the trauma that he often forgets is a part of him as much as all of the good things in his life is manifesting itself. He has brief, too bright images of someone breaking in, some hitman called by Pierce, a second chance after Rumlow failed, Bucky alone up against that. That’s ridiculous, he knows, and he tells himself as much. But there are other things too, some asshole approaching Bucky on the street and jeering at him, a terrible, sudden trigger that leaves him shaking and dissociated.

 _That’s what Penny’s for_ , he tells himself, and relaxes a little. But Bucky shouldn’t have to be alone, shouldn’t ever have to worry about not being held when he needs to be.

And also, he just fucking misses Bucky. It is his first time away, truly away, from Bucky since they were split, and it gives him a swooping and unpleasant sensation in his stomach, checking into a hotel room alone far from New York. The happy part and the unhappy part of his life are splitting into having and not having Bucky. He tried to draw it once in a sketchbook. For most of the page, maybe eighty percent of it, he drew flowers, petals overlapping each other and curling in, vines weaving in between one another, an overgrown bush of plants that probably could never grow together. Then, for a sliver of the page, he drew barren branches and cracked dry leaves, the lines harder and angrier, until he went back to swooping, elegant strokes of lush color. This is like a scene from the part of his life that is shrouded in gray.

He tells himself not to be dramatic, that he will be home in one week and until then he’s got work. He sleeps restlessly in his too-big hotel bed.

The days on set are easy enough. He walked in with absolutely no sense of what was going to happen, just that he would have to be drawing and painting a few things over the next three days and eventually, they will appear in a movie. He’d asked Clint why they wanted him for this; there are dozens of artists already in LA who would do it for half the price, and had been told the director was looking for as much authenticity as possible—it is a film about a famous artist, so a real famous artist they’ll have. So he goes, and has his hands attended to by the makeup crew so that they look more like Thor’s, contoured to look slightly tanner.

It is nice to see Thor. When he is not shooting his scenes, most of which involve walking around a large expensive house that is meant to look like it hasn’t been taken care of and brooding, he sits with Steve and they catch up—how’s New York, great, LA? Good, great weather, congrats on your last exhibit, I saw it when I was there, how’s Bucky? Really good, how’s Jane?

Someone takes a picture of the two of them. Steve sends it to Bucky, to which Bucky replies “😍😍😍😍”

 _Which one of us is that for_ , Steve writes back.

_Bucky: no idea what you’re talking about._

_Bucky: how’s being a hollywood star?_

_Steve: Exhausting. My hands are contoured to look like Thor’s._

_Bucky: that’s hot_

He does some drawings, camera close to his hands, a couple of different ones for different angles. Two days from now, he needs to be on a different set for another scene; why they need that many close ups they need of hands doing art escapes him, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do alone in LA for twenty-four hours; he is visited by another pang of missing Bucky, petty and clingy as it is. He is astonished that he was able to do this for four years.

After filming, Steve gets dinner with Thor in the hotel restaurant. He is exhausted and slightly dazed from the constant motion and instruction of a movie set, but it is nice, sitting in the dark hotel bar with a beer. They mull over their careers again, and their respective relationships, and then Steve clears his throat.

“Heard anything from your brother?” Steve asks casually. The question of a Hollywood adaptation of his and Bucky’s life occupies an unpleasant and irritating place in his mind, cropping up every few days with absolutely nothing to be done about it. He has been meaning to text Thor and ask, but the prospect of an unwanted answer has always stopped him. He half believes that one day he will look up on the subway and see an advertisement for it.

“Yeah, actually,” Thor says. Steve raises an eyebrow. “Project’s having a hard time getting traction. I’d gander it’ll take a few years at least, if it happens. You should be okay for a while.”

“Right,” Steve says skeptically, “that’s good.”

Thor shrugs. “I told him it was a dick move.” Steve laughs dryly, tired.

A few more people from the set join them. They get another round of drinks, they trade stories about other movies that Steve observes and laughs at. 

By the time he gets back to his room, he’s slightly drunker than he realized. Not room spinning, word slurring, can’t remember his name drunk, but drunk enough that the lights pop slightly and everything sways when he walks too fast.

He calls Bucky. All day, while he was on set and while he was drinking with Thor and all through the conversations with people he did not especially want to be talking to, Steve missed Bucky. What he realized, though, was that this missing Bucky is very different from the emotions that he has come to identify as missing Bucky in the past. He is a text or phone call away, and in a few days, Steve will be home, will be able to wrap his arms around him on their couch and feel the brush of his hair against his face and hear his voice. This, he thinks, is probably the furthest they have ever physically been from one another. How awful, that they spent four years in the same city, maybe missed each other in passing subway cars or opposite sides of the street, and now, here he is on the other side of the country, and he can hear Bucky’s voice if he picks up his phone. How many other hotel rooms he lay in, much drunker and much more miserable, wishing for the same thing.

He is deeply aware of this now in his sem-drunk, comfortably warm state. He lies on his back in the dark and listens to the phone ring.

“Hi, babe,” Bucky says when he picks up. Steve’s heart goes airless with love. He can hear Bucky smiling, his voice a little hoarse with fatigue. Steve wishes he could kiss him.

“Hi, yourself,” Steve says, grinning. “I love you.”

Bucky laughs. “Is that what you called me for?”

“Partially. I also miss you.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Maybe. Not very.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Tell me about your day.”

“It was good. I missed you. I had dinner with Scott and I got Penny a new collar.” Bucky shuffles something.

“How’s Scott?”

“He’s good, he says hi. I told him I’d help him get the baby’s room set up this week.”

“Aw. Is he nervous?”

“Yeah, he’s freaking out. Eight more weeks or something.”

“What color’s Penny’s collar?” Steve is pleasantly tired. The shadows in the room condense and stretch themselves lazily. Bucky’s voice is slowing them down.

“Lavender. She looks awesome.”

“Oh, I bet.”

“How was your day? More exciting, probably.”

“Mm, I’d rather have been there. It was alright. Film sets are insane. Don’t ever be an actor.”

“I’ll take it off my career list.”

Steve laughs. The room is fuzzy on the edges, Bucky’s voice filling the space where his vision starts to blur. “How’s writing going?”

“Good. I’m getting notes from them tomorrow.” His voice snags a little with hesitation.

“That okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Um. I just…” The sound of his breathing, quiet and familiar. “Do you think I’m, um, kidding myself? That I could ever do this, really? I’m, um. I don’t… I feel like, um, I’m a joke and I’m not smart and everyone around me can see what… what I am.” His voice is so quiet.

Steve sits up, sadness jerking him a little closer to sobriety. “Buck. God, no. You… you’re so, so smart and talented, baby. The freaking Atlantic wouldn’t have chosen you if that wasn’t true.” A pause, a slight hitch of Bucky’s breath. The words Steve wants to say are there but floating too fast underneath the alcohol for him to string together. “You just… you’re so much, okay? Sometimes you make me think of pointillism, that’s those paintings that are just little dots…”

“I know what pointillism is, Steve.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But you… you’re like this beautiful, incredible piece of art. And the things that happened to you and the ways you got hurt… it’s one little dot, or a collection of dots, but you’re just this picture that’s so much, and all of the other dots that are really you are bigger and brighter and draw the eye more. Like your humor, and your kindness, and what a good writer you are, and how strong you are, and what a good cook, those are like the focus of the painting. All of the good things are the parts that people know and remember.”

Bucky is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “So am I more _Sunday in the Park_ or that other one we saw at the Met that’s a beach?”

Steve bursts out laughing. “Seurat couldn’t dream of painting anything as impressive as you.”

Bucky giggles. “I like that metaphor.”

“Mm, you would’ve done a better one.”

“I miss you.”

“Me too, baby.” A kaleidoscopic pattern arranges itself on the ceiling. “Wait, what time is it there?”

“Um. Three.”

Steve sits up, which makes the whole room jostle. “Jesus, Buck. You okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I’m just having a hard time sleeping and, um, I’ve got some writing due in a few days so I’m working on that.”

“Okay,” Steve says quietly. “Try to get some sleep, love.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I will. Hearing your voice helps.”

“You can always call me.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I miss your face.”

“It misses you.”

Steve laughs and, with some effort, turns himself onto his stomach. “Call in the morning?”

“Yeah. Love you, Stevie.”

“Love you so much.”

The room feels colder without Bucky’s voice. Steve showers, throws on pajamas, and passes out almost instantly.

***

While Steve kickstarts his Hollywood career, Bucky distracts himself until he’s back. He sees his friends, he stocks their kitchen with groceries, he goes to class, which is extremely satisfying because he is able to tell T’Challa that he heard back from Harpers. This class is harder than the first one and more time consuming; it is nice, to have something that he can focus wholly on, especially this week. The night when Steve drunk called him, he hadn’t even realized the time, focused on a project for this class, and anyway, he doesn’t like sleeping alone.

“I’m proud of you, Bucky,” T’Challa says, when Bucky stammers out the news, suddenly worried he’s boasting. “That’s a huge accomplishment. I hope you’re celebrating.”

“My boyfriend took me to dinner,” Bucky says, with a little laugh.

“Fantastic.” T’Challa gives him a warm smile, throws his bag over his shoulder, and adds, “Today’s my daughter’s first birthday, so I’ve gotta get home, but I’ll see you next week. Take care.”

Bucky goes to Scott’s for dinner. Maggie is there, seven months pregnant and exhausted but warm as ever. He hasn’t seen her in a long time; they talk about her store and his plans in the next few weeks and shopping for the baby, and she goes to bed early and leaves him and Scott alone on the couch.

“How are you and Steve?” Scott asks, trying to sound nonchalant. Bucky smiles. Scott likes Steve, he knows, but he still will occasionally treat Steve like he hasn’t won Scott over yet, if only to let Bucky know that he deserves the best and if Steve isn’t giving him that, Scott will see to it that it’s dealt with. The idea of Steve not being good enough to him is so completely laughable, but it still gives Bucky a familiar rush of warmth to think about Scott worrying about how he is being treated.

“Good. Great.” He smirks a little and Scott smiles back, resigned. “You gonna stop worrying about me when you have a kid to worry about?”

“You think I can’t take care of two kids?” Scott replies. “Seriously, I haven’t seen a lot of you lately. Everything’s okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Scott, Steve’s great.”

“I know,” Scott says. “I know.” He leans back, apparently satisfied.

“I miss him.”

“Yeah, I bet. Must be weird having him gone.”

Bucky nods, and they’re quiet. Then he shifts a little in his seat. The unpleasant and suffocating feeling of failure has clung to him slightly since Montauk, and he wonders about bringing it up now. Of all of his friends, Scott is the one he trusts most to be blunt with him and to make the fact that he is talking about his sex life feel like something easy. Even though he has discussed it since in therapy, he could use the advice of a person older than him who he trusts, who is effortlessly reassuring even when the conversation veers towards discomfort.

“Um,” Bucky says, “can I ask you about something?”

“‘Course.”

“Um. This is gonna sound weird, but, um. Is sex ever… is it ever, like… do you ever have anxiety around it? About, um, what you want or don’t want or… sorry, this sounds stupid.” He ducks his head, embarrassed by the question. Very few people know him like Scott does, but he still feels ashamed for dragging up something ugly and ragged like this to be analyzed, like he is some kind of freak for asking it.

Scott takes a minute. “It’s okay if you do have that, Buck,” he says quietly. “I mean… after everything, it makes complete sense. Sex can be really complicated.”

Bucky knows his cheeks are red. He is vividly aware of every sensation around him, the faint smell of Maggie’s candles and some excited yelling on the street and the texture of his tee shirt which suddenly feels too tight. “I, um. Sometimes I… I want to do some things, or, um, it feels like something I could try, but then it just feels really scary.” Being able to say these things to someone who is not Steve or Jennifer feels like a sudden and momentous step, like opening your eyes after a plane lifts off only to realize you are safely off the ground. 

Scott doesn’t laugh or sneer. He leans thoughtfully back. “Well,” Scott says. “I mean, obviously, whatever you feel and want is okay, Buck. And Steve’s gotta respect that.”

“He does,” Bucky assures him.

“He better.”

“Scott.”

“Sorry, sorry. I know he does.” A long, tense silence. “Even if you say something and change your mind.”

“Oh, my god, Scott. Yes, always.”

“Okay, okay! Good!” He holds his hands up, and Bucky laughs. “But, I mean… you don’t have to want or not want anything, you know? There’s no shame in wanting to try things and having them not work. No one likes everything they try and you don’t ever have to subject yourself to something because you think someone else wants it.”

Bucky considers this, circling his spoon around the rim of his bowl. “I feel… I feel stupid, when I ask Steve to try something and it doesn’t work. I feel like it’s not fair to him.”

“Well, that isn’t true,” Scott says. “But you know you… are allowed to test things out yourself, too, right? I’m obviously no expert, but, um, it might be easier to figure things out alone at first, if that’s something you’d want.”

Bucky knows he’s blushing. “I don’t know.”

Scott says, “Why not?”

“I just, um. I don’t—I mean. There’s no reason not, I guess. Um. I just, um, don’t really. Do that.” He has tried a few times, and even though it went basically fine afterwards he felt slightly sick. He does not say that the part of sex that is most appealing to him is the way it can be used as something gentle and delicate, something that can feel like being taken care of, and that is only possible when Steve is there. He doesn’t say that he gets anxious when he isn’t being reassured that he’s doing well, that he just feels like a slut otherwise, even though he is working so, so hard not to think that. He doesn’t say he’s too scared to watch porn and trigger himself.

Scott grins warmly. “Whatever you want, kiddo. You should only do things that appeal to you. But I just… it’s just a thought.”

“Sorry to dump this on you,” Bucky whispers.

“Are you kidding? It’s not dumping. You can talk to me about anything, ever.”

Bucky bites his lip and smiles down. Scott reaches across to muss his hair, then says, gently, “I’m really proud of you.”

He takes a cab home from Scott’s. Penny lays her head in his lap as he looks out the window over the Manhattan bridge, the water streaked with white and red light, and he feels strangely settled and hopeful, like the first light of spring breaking through.

***

The third night Steve is gone, Bucky has a terrible dream.

The nightmare starts the way it usually does, a vivid and oversaturated memory that he has to reexperience. He dreams about Rumlow tonight, fucking his throat, his eyes closed against the agony and disgust, but when Rumlow is finished and he pulls his hand back to hit Bucky, Bucky realizes they aren’t in an alley or in Brock’s apartment but in his and Steve’s bedroom.

“Can’t take care of yourself, can you?” Brock sneers. Bucky tries to jerk away and finds his hands are restrained. Brock squeezes his throat. “No one’s gonna protect you, you stupid little slut.”

“Stop,” he gasps, voice ravaged. “Please—” His hair pulled so his head is jerked back; he whimpers. “Steve,” he hears himself say, “Steve.”

“He left you,” Brock growls, and kicks Bucky directly in the stomach. His body is lit up with pain. “He doesn’t want you.”

Bucky flinches away from a sensation on his cheek, but it is not Brock. 

Bucky wakes up gasping and shaking. He lurches awake and jerks so abruptly to the side that he knocks a glass off of the table and hears it shatter somewhere on the ground. Penny has nuzzled him awake and is sitting right beside him, pushing lightly against him to remind him where he is, but the darkness and silence is terribly disorienting and even after Bucky fumbles with the light, he sits there, trembling and crying, for a few minutes until the terror starts to dissipate and he is able to remember that he’s safe, that Brock is dead and can’t get to him. He buries his face in Penny’s fur and breathes, then tries to convince himself not to call Steve. It’s midnight in California.

Instead, he texts him. _are you awake?_

A noise somewhere in the house makes him flinch. It is an awful and familiar sensation, waking up into terror alone, like having the wind knocked out of him. He closes his eyes, then, trembling, tells Penny to scan the house. When she leaves, the room feels large and sparse. On shaking legs, he stands, wincing at the shattered glass. He is too wired and alarmed to be patient, so he sweeps it, hand quivering, into a small pile. When he lifts his hand, he’s pricked a diamond of crimson into his palm.

Next to him, his phone buzzes. 

_Steve: Yep. You ok?_

_Bucky: yeah_ He’s shaking very hard. He can hear Penny’s nails clicking against the floor somewhere else in the house; he wishes she’d come back.

Steve calls him. Floored with embarrassing relief, Bucky picks up and says, voice high and shaky, “Hey.”

“Hey, baby,” Steve says. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers. “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

“Sh, Buck, it’s okay, don’t be sorry. Bad dream?”

“Yeah.” Bucky bites down on his lip. He is balling a tissue up in his fist to stop the bleeding. “Yeah. Um. I just got scared.”

“Want me to call you on Facetime?”

“Really?”

“‘Course.”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Okay. Give me one second.” Sure enough, one minute later, Steve calls him back. Bucky swipes the back of his hand uselessly over his eyes and answers.

“Hi, baby,” Steve says. Bucky smiles weakly, wishing suddenly that he was not on the floor. “Talk to me.”

“It’s dumb,” Bucky says, very quietly. “It was just a bad one. It felt… it felt really real.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I wish I was there. Is Penny with you?””

“She’s, um, checking the house.”

“Oh, Buck. It’s alright, baby, you’re safe.”

Steve’s voice, lulling and kind, is enough to make him want to start crying again. For one person to be able to elicit such goodness just with their voice and their being must be something like a miracle. “Yeah,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I called you.”

“Why? I love talking to you.”

Bucky laughs shakily. Penny trots back in calmly and nestles herself into his lap, butting her head lightly against his stomach. Bucky tilts the camera towards her, and Steve laughs, the sound tinny through the speakers. “You feeling any better?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says softly. “God.”

“I wish I was there, baby.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Four days.”

“I know.”

“Can I stay on the phone with you?”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

Bucky chokes out a laugh. “Yeah. Thanks. I love you.”

The next several days go by uneventfully, until the morning before Steve is going to fly home. He wakes up to a text from Clint with a link and the message, “No big deal but just be aware that this is out there.”

Steve blinks groggily, then taps it. It sends him to a gossip rag article, complete with the hot pink background and shitty graphics superimposed over a photo of him and Thor from the restaurant the other night and the headline _For Thor Odinson, IS it Adam and STEVE?_

Steve rubs at his temple.

_Thor Odinson and artist Steve Rogers have been spotted several times together this week. Rogers is working on the set of Odinson’s new feature film, but the two have been spending most of their time in the privacy of dark bars and restaurants. Sources say the pair looked “extremely intimate.” Odinson’s sexuality has long been a source of speculation, while Rogers has been in a relationship with high school boyfriend and former prostitute James Barnes for the last year. Is it just a strong friendship? Or could sparks be flying on the set of MOVIE TITLE?_

Steve rolls his eyes. Generally, he’s not famous enough to be in these kinds of fluff pieces, and the absurdity of it almost makes him laugh. It’s not until he scrolls through the comments that a terrible chill jerks through him.

_YESSS i am HERE for this_

_He really went from dating a prostitute to sleeping with thor, i wanna glow up like that_

_Steve got tired of paying for sex and upgraded to an oscar winner, good for him_

_waiting 4 his ex to bring the rape accusations forward 4 him haha_

Steve says out loud to his hotel room, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

He reads them over again. He is always astonished by the cruelty of people toward Bucky, Bucky who has only ever been kind and good and brave, that courage could somehow draw punishment. He turns off his phone, presses his face into his hands, and exhales through his teeth. Then he takes a breath and texts Wanda, _are you still with Buck?_

 _Yeah_ , she answers, almost right away. _Everything ok?_

Steve takes a couple of screenshots and sends it to her. _do you know if he’s seen this?_

_Wanda: Fuck_

_Don’t think so_

Steve sighs, then sends _Don’t mention it I’ll tell him when I’m home._

Ironically enough, he has lunch plans with Thor that day. When he meets him at the cafe, an overpriced vegan place close to the museum Steve is finishing his painting at. He looks wildly out of place, paint spattered indiscriminately on his clothes and hands and face. He was offered this piece, a permanent installation of anything he wanted, just cover an entire wall with a painting. He is painting two people’s hands, clasped and resting just below their chins, lips slightly parted, the face cropped off. It’s good, he knows. He showed Bucky the mock up of it and Bucky said, a little nervously, “It’s gorgeous. It’s, um. Sexier than usual.”

“Nah,” Steve said, “they’re talking about their flossing habits.” Bucky had laughed, but he was right. It is sexier than anything Steve otherwise paints, even though it’s not explicit. It is the idea of arousal, the implication of something pretty and sensual, which he did not say to Bucky, although it fits his life so well he is embarrassed by his own directness.

Thor, when he sees Steve, says, “Ah, if it isn’t my secret boyfriend.”

Steve snorts. “Jesus.” He claps him on the shoulder, very platonic in case anyone around them is looking to sell photos to TMZ. When they are inside, salads and smoothies ordered, Steve says, “You have to deal with this shit twenty-four seven?” 

Thor shrugs. “You do adjust.”

“I don’t know how you do it, man.”

“Hey, you got through it yourself.” He waves his fork around vaguely, nonchalant.

“Not like this.”

“I know it’s worse when they go after your partner,” Thor says thoughtfully. “I always have to stop myself from getting into online fights when I see people attacking Jane. I imagine it’s the same.”

Steve spins his bottle in his hand; a bead of perspiration slides off of it and slicks the table. “I just can’t believe he still has to go through this shit.”

Thor hums sympathetically. “Yeah, man. None of it’s fair.”

***

Two days after his conversation with Scott, Bucky meets Wanda for lunch. He has thought about the conversation he had with Scott a few days ago, and maybe he is looking for something to legitimize it but they are walking down West 6th and they pass a sex shop and he startled a little, then stops. “Buck?” Wanda says. “You alright?” 

“Can we—” Bucky begins, and then blushes, shy. “Um. Could we go in?”

“Really?”

He studies the ground, the cement worn and cracked. “I, um. I had this conversation with Scott the other day where we, um. He made some good points about… this stuff and like, he mentioned that, um, you know, I can, um. Try things alone, and, um, my therapist has said that, too, and I know it’s—it’s weird—”

“Babe,” she says, smiling. “It’s not weird, Buck. That’s fucking great. Yes, we can go in.”

She keeps their arms linked inside; Bucky is grateful for the touch. He is paralyzed by everything surrounding him, suddenly convinced this was a mistake, and Wanda protects him from having to adjust to it himself; she talks fast and purposefully, like she’s waving him through a dull part of a museum tour. It feels a bit like a museum. Everything sexual takes on an entirely new context in this part of his life, so different from what he is adjusted to that it is like he’s discovering it for the first time.

“Is there something you were looking for?” Wanda asks him quietly. Bucky swallows. He hadn’t thought that far. Frankly, getting in here is further than he’d thought this would go. “It’s okay if there’s not,” she adds. “We can just look around, you don’t have to get anything.” When Bucky nods, she squeezes the crook of his elbow.

It’s one of those very classy sex stores, which Bucky guesses Wanda had chosen on purpose. There are no pornographic images on the wall, there is no enormous or brutal bondage section. All of that is confined to one discrete corner that Bucky, unfortunately, clocks right away. It is like realizing the brakes on your car don’t work. Wanda catches him staring at it and tugs very gently at his arm.

“C’mon, babe, let’s look at the cute stuff.”

He stares at a pair of handcuffs, at a long black crop, things for men who have convinced themselves it is okay to hurt people as long as it is shrouded in the dangerous and glamorous facade of something sexy and exciting. He feels vaguely dizzy.

Wanda squeezes his arm again. “Buck? You don’t have to look at that, honey.”

He blinks and nods, and lets her pull him away. Her touch is comforting and familiar, and she steers them to a wall full of expensive looking pink or glittery things and says, “This is better anyway.” Bucky smiles and nods, then scans, heart in his throat. “You don’t have to get anything, if you just wanna look, obviously, but if there’s something you do like, I think you should get it.”

Hand trembling embarrassingly, Bucky picks up a small box with fancy lettering. The toy is small and made from pink glass and advertised as smooth and good for “beginners.” He bites his lip.

Wanda watches him. “Yeah?”

“I don’t know,” he says very quietly. He turns around, feeling very hot; he is visited by the sudden and miserable conviction that standing behind him will be some dark, shapeless fusion of all the men who have ever hurt him, watching him and sneering, _I knew you were a desperate little slut._ He swallows hard.

“It’s cute,” Wanda says. “You should get it if you want.”

He turns the box over. “I’ve never had one.”

“All the more reason,” she says. Then, quietly, “Seriously, only if you want it. You don’t need to get it to prove anything.”

“I know,” Bucky says quietly. “Um. You don’t think it’s weird?”

She rests her chin on his shoulder. “No, Buck. Not at all.”

He is flushed and overwhelmed by the idea of purchasing it. He doesn’t want to be looked at as sexual. He cannot believe that anyone could see him in here, holding what he is holding, and not think that everyone who has ever called him a slut or a whore or desperate for it was correct.

He is mulling this over, uncomfortably hot, when Wanda squeezes his elbow. “You want me to buy it?” 

Bucky blinks.“You don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t mind at all. Let me, if it’ll make you more comfortable.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

Flooded with gratitude for her action and her existence, Bucky says, “Use my card, though.”

“Yeah, alright.” She grins, kisses his cheek, and links her arm with his again.

“Grab something you want, too,” Bucky adds.

Wanda snorts. “You’re gonna buy me a vibrator?”

“I feel like we’re past the point in our friendship where that’s appropriate.” 

So he does. Bucky hovers behind her while she pays. He is struck vaguely jealous by the ease in which other people are able to exist in relation to sex. He doesn’t want it to always be something with such high frequency, constantly too hot and too fast, needing to be handled carefully and with extreme caution. No matter what, sex will never be something casual for him. He feels a little deflated, but when they are outside Wanda slips the box into his bag and kisses his cheek and says, “Babe, you just bought a sex toy.”

Bucky laughs, cheeks very hot. “I guess I did.”

Later, he tucks the toy in its satin bag into the back of his sock drawer. He is overwhelmed and flustered by its presence, and it has felt like enough to purchase it for now. He bites his lip; Penny nudges into his knee, and he smiles down at her. He feels worn out by the adrenaline of today, but comfortably so. He thinks about Steve, home in two days, and his cheeks flush unnecessarily, and then he thinks about Steve, home in two days, and his heart turns over in relief. He kisses Penny on the nose and throws himself onto the bed and checks his phone. Steve has texted him, _hi i love you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, so this is very random and idk if anyone is interested but if you donate 5+ dollars to an organization fighting for black lives matter and protecting protestsers and fighting for police abolition, i will write you somethign in the 500-1000 word range, it can obviously be this fic-adjacent but also if you have like, a vaguer sb prompt or whatever i'm happy to do that too, this google doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-0KC83vYfVQ-2freQveH43PWxuab2uWDEGolzrNoIks/mobilebasic#h.zaba4bh85ex) has a lot of great links so please donate if you can, ik i do prompts anyway but if you donate i will guarantee that it gets done very fast
> 
> love you all, stay safe and sane
> 
> cafelesbian on tumblr


	33. thirty-three

Steve’s flight is delayed.

He exhales through his teeth when they announce it. He is pissed off at LAX and its inhabitants, he feels too full from greasy airport food and too warm in his sweatshirt and he wants to go home.

He texts Bucky _flight delayed. gonna lose my mind in LAX_.

Bucky answers right away. _fuck :( how long?_

_Steve: at least 2 hours. ugh_

_Bucky: :((( steal the plane and fly it i miss you_

_Steve: youre so right, on my way_

_Steve: if I end up getting in late dont feel like you have to wait up_

_Bucky: don’t be stupid_

Steve’s flight ends up being delayed three hours, announced in half-hour increments that make Steve white-knuckle the handle of his bag and bounce his leg. He is so tired, so worn through from the nonstop quality of the week and being so close to seeing Bucky again but still being told he has to wait. When he lands, it’s after two. He pushes, half-delirious, through the JFK baggage claim, slightly nauseated by jetlag and the ugly, dry shades of gray in the airport, throws himself into a cab, and goes home.

Park Slope is completely dark, suspended in the safe quiet that they had moved there for. Steve smiles weakly at the familiar brownstones, feeling himself settle when they pull up his block. He thanks and pays the driver and unlocks the door quietly, assuming Bucky is asleep.

He shuts the door behind him, exhaling, then straightens up. Bucky is up, looking very tired but smiling, and before Steve can say anything he flings himself into Steve’s arms and hugs him, and Steve, laughing, hugs him back so fiercely that they bump against the doorway. Penny, excited, wags her tail and circles them; Steve lets go briefly of Bucky to bend down and give her a kiss.

“Hi,” Bucky says, voice raspy with sleep and laughter.

Steve kisses him. “You didn’t have to wait up.”

“Shut up.” His eyes are bright. Steve kisses him one more time. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

“God, so am I.” They stand there grinning at each other, enjoying the privilege of having been apart and now being together again for as long as they want.

“I made you pasta,” Bucky says. He tucks himself under Steve’s arm and pulls him further inside, suitcase abandoned at the bottom of the stairs.

“Buck, you didn’t have to.”

“I know.” Steve finds himself sitting at their kitchen island, a glass of water and a bowl of pasta tossed with mozzarella and cherry tomatoes materialized in front of him. “I thought you’d be hungry and I couldn’t sleep.”

“I love you,” Steve says weakly. Bucky kisses his cheek. He looks tired but flushed with happiness, and Steve is struck with the absolute improbable, absolute otherworldly luck of his life, that he has Bucky to return to after a week away, that he has Bucky to return to after a meeting or a run or a trip to the deli. “God, this is good.”

Steve eats one-handed so he can keep an arm around Bucky, their chairs pushed together so Bucky can lean into him. Bucky sighs, suddenly sleepy, his body giving into the relief of having Steve back. Bucky knows he missed him more than is probably normal but he doesn’t care; missing Steve exists in the context only of things that are terrible. Steve is the marker between happiness and misery in his life, and losing him for more than a few hours for the first time since he lost him for four years unsettled him, threw his body out of the thoughtless safety that Steve brings to him just by being there. 

“How was your flight?” Bucky asks him, wanting to hear his voice.

“Fine. The delay was brutal but I fell asleep. I missed flying with you.”

Bucky kisses his shoulder, then gestures to the bowl. “You want more?”

“Nah, that’s perfect. Thanks, baby.”

They sit up in their bed and eat from a pint of Cherry Garcia, pausing for cherry flavored kisses every few minutes. Being home, a rightness has returned to the world, the shimmery, iridescent quality of seeing someone you loved after having missed them waking Steve with a thrum of electricity up even after the lethargy of a long flight. Bucky gets tired first, jet lag keeping Steve up, and he spends thirty minutes just laying there, running his hand up and down Bucky’s arm and listening to the quiet arc of his breath and feeling glad to be with him.

***

The next morning, Bucky blinks himself awake around eleven, the sun already waxed to its full brightness, filling the room with buttery light. Steve is still asleep, knocked out by the time change. Bucky tucks himself closer against him and sighs, reveling in being beside him again, smiling when Steve stirs.

“Hi, you,” Bucky says.

Steve smiles blearily. “Hey. Time is it?”

“Eleven. Latest you’ve slept, like, ever.”

“I sleep better with you.”

Ignoring the swoop of delight in his chest, Bucky says, “We can make breakfast?”

“Mhm.” Steve leans in, presses a fast kiss to his lips, and throws the covers off of him. “I’ll go get coffee started.”

With the house sharpened and brightened by the day, Steve studies their living room and realizes it has been organized and cleaned like in preparation for some important dinner party. Soft blankets usually thrown over the back of the couch have been folded and tucked into a chest, tv remotes and video game controllers laid neatly on their shelf, dust and faint leftover coffee stains scrubbed off of the mantle and coffee table. Even their pillows have been fluffed and staged beautifully, the place on the couch where they’d sat last night making the room look unfinished, like a snag in a new sweater. Steve heads into the kitchen, where it is the same; spare papers and pens and envelopes left on the counters have been put away, drawers of junk have been straightened out into something that makes sense. In their bread pantry are about three different kinds of bread, homemade, and when Steve lifts the top of the one tupperware left out it is filled with several different kinds of cookies.

Steve is still looking around when Bucky comes in and tucks himself into Steve’s chest, nuzzling into his neck and kissing his collarbone. “Pancakes?” Bucky asks.

“Sure,” Steve says. “Hey, did you clean the whole place?”

“Um. Yeah, I guess. I wasn’t really thinking about it.”

“And you baked enough to start your own business?”

“A little, yeah.”

“You didn’t… have to do all that, Buck.”

Bucky bites his lip, busying himself with retrieving the skillet. “Yeah, um, I know. It kind of helped, when I was feeling anxious and I was alone.” He has talked to Jennifer about this, the fact that some of the things that most calm him down are cleaning and organizing and cooking, things that, when he’s finished, can be looked at and solidly measured as an accomplishment. Things that other people can look at and unequivocally see as productive and good. When he had first gotten to Wanda’s and when he had first moved in with Steve, he had cleaned compulsively, washed any mug or dish in sight, swept and vacuumed and refolded until both times, they had intervened and told him he didn’t have to do that. Even then, though, he found it hard to stop. When Steve was gone and sleep was stunted and sparse, he had busied himself with these things, refolding their sweaters and organizing their bookshelves alphabetically and trying to tell himself this was a normal response.

Behind him, Steve wraps his arms around Bucky and kisses his shoulder. “I’m sorry, baby.” He knows Bucky is stressed, because Bucky lives his whole life with some degree of stress, but also because they are approaching the anniversary of the trial and if it is affecting Steve, it is certainly affecting Bucky. Steve curses himself for not thinking of this until now. He had spent the last week wondering where, besides being trapped in LA’s endless smog of Ubers and seven dollar beers without Bucky, the agitation was coming from, the feeling that one more unpleasantry would make him jump out of his skin, and than he’d realized it was his body warning him that the earth has almost completed a full revolution since he and Bucky were almost killed. He hasn’t been sure how to ask Bucky what he needs, and he hasn’t asked at all on the off-chance that Bucky hadn’t been thinking of it the same way he had and he feels remarkably stupid. “Is it… um. Anything in particular?”

“I don’t know.” He sighs. “I think, um. I mean. It’s almost been a year.” His body tenses against Steve’s; Steve keeps holding him, letting him know he’s safe and loved. “It’s stupid, I guess. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It’s not stupid, Buck.” Steve kisses his ear. “I’ve noticed too, you know.”

“Yeah?” Bucky says, incredible relief in his voice.

“Yeah.” Steve kisses his jaw. “We should go somewhere, that week.”

Bucky turns to lock his arms around Steve’s waist, leaning properly against his chest. “That’d be really nice.”

Steve kisses the top of his head. “Done. Now I’m gonna make you pancakes.”

***

It is a good, easy few days. They each have very little going on, and they spend the week acting like a couple separated for several years, cooking each other breakfast and luxuriating in their bathtub and going on long, aimless walks with their dog. Steve feels a slight pang for the expectation apparently wired into him of reunion sex; it is not something he had thought would happen, neccessarily, but a week away from Bucky had not made Steve any less attracted to him.

It also reminds him, bizarrely, of the way he had pictured being with Bucky again before he’d found him. It is a fantasy he hasn’t thought of since it was shattered to dust when Bucky looked up at him in an alley with bruising on his neck and weighing a hundred and ten pounds, but he used to picture something dramatic and romantic, seeing each other across a street, a kiss in the middle of a sidewalk surrounded by strangers, accompanied by swelling music and later that night, hungry, passionate sex to make up for all the time without it. He has not considered this imagined scene in a long, long time, and he is slightly repulsed by the memory. He thinks he, like all of the other abominable men in Bucky’s life, has reduced him to a sex fantasy.

But then he pulls Bucky closer to him in bed, Bucky’s hair tickling his chin, and is filled with such unspeakable gratitude and love that to wish for anything else seems purposeless and insane, and he smiles. There is no need to reflect on being without Bucky because he is with Bucky, despite every odd, despite every terrible thing that has happened, and that is enough.

While he is contemplating this, it occurs to him that he hasn’t told Bucky about the article yet. He’d been too tired to go into it when he just got home and it slipped his mind in the days after that and right now, Bucky is mostly asleep against him in a tee shirt of Steve’s and pale blue satin underwear—and that is very new, too, Bucky becoming a little more comfortable falling asleep in these or boxers—and to mention it seems like unnecessary pain. Satisfied with this decision, Steve kisses his cheek and closes his eyes.

He will come to regret this decision two days later. Bucky is leaving class, walking out with a girl he’s become friends with named America, when she says, “By the way, I saw you in the news this week.”

A terrible ripple of cold. “What?” He forces himself to keep walking.

“Is your boyfriend that artist?” Bucky nods. “There were just some photos of him and Thor Odinson. It was just a tabloid.” She looks a little guilty, suddenly. “I, um, assumed you’d seen.”

“Oh,” Buckys says. “Um. I hadn’t.”

“Oh, well,” she says, regaining some composure. “It’s just a dumb clickbait article. I read those things at like, four am when I’m having insomnia.”

Bucky laughs weakly, then tells her he has a dinner to get to. Then, as soon as he’s out of sight, he googles Steve’s name.

The articles are pretty tame, paparazzi who followed Thor and threw Steve into the articles, a bonus C-list celebrity. There are two or three that try to make it seem like they are having some kind of closeted affair, but it’s enough to make even Bucky laugh. They have been photoshopped together to look like they’re sitting closer, hearts superimposed between them, a photo of Thor’s poor, long-suffering girlfriend tucked into the corner.

He doesn’t get, though, why Steve wouldn’t have told him, sent him the link for a laugh. He knows Steve isn’t cheating on him—frankly, he wouldn’t even have the time to—and the article is so clearly false that even Bucky wouldn’t have spun out about it.

He scrolls down a bit to where the comment section is, though, and he gets why. Instantaneously, he feels like he has been sucked through the floor, all of the air left above him. There are more than he would have expected on something like this, and not all of them are cruel, but the ones that are vicious make him feel as if he is reverberating out of his own skin. He is jerked back to one year ago, when this had been a daily occurrence. He only reads for a minute or so, but it makes him feel awful enough that when he manages to turn his phone off and head towards the subway, he is nauseous and unsettled.

***

Steve is on the couch when Bucky gets home, half-torn envelopes next to him, mostly finished cup of coffee left forgotten on the table. “Hey,” he says warmly, gesturing to the papers. “Bills.”

Bucky smiles tightly. He feels stiff and childishly humiliated, like a teenager who’s been told the person they have a crush on has been mocking them the whole time. He sits, uncertain. Steve kisses him on the cheek and he tenses a little.

“You okay?” Steve asks, drawing quickly back. 

Bucky becomes intently focused on twisting his hands. “Um,” he says. “You didn’t tell me about the articles.”

Steve presses his lips together a fraction. “I was gonna. I—It didn’t seem like a big deal.”

Bucky says quietly, “It feels like a big deal.”

“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve says. “I—it’s just a shitty tabloid, you know that I’m not cheating on you.” A brief, terse silence. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, because he does. “But why—why didn’t you tell me?”

“‘Cause it’s stupid and I didn’t want you to feel bad over what some gossip rag is saying.”

“I’m not—” Bucky starts, voice trembling. “I’m not weak, Steve. You don’t have to treat me like I’m gonna break down if I hear something I don’t like.”

“I wasn’t, Bucky,” Steve says softly. “I just wanted—I didn’t want to hurt you over nothing.”

Nothing Steve is saying is wrong, Bucky isn’t even angry at Steve, but feels a shuddering, electric darkness shift in his chest. “Did you see what people were saying? In the comments?”

A truck outside the window, a band of shadow passing over them. “Yeah,” Steve says, very softly. “Baby—”

Bucky stands very suddenly, his movements stilted and pained. “Why is this what I am, Steve?” he chokes out. “I didn’t want to be this, I fucking didn’t want any of this and everyone _knows_ what I am and what I did and I just—I didn’t want any of it to happen.” Steve stands slowly; Bucky looks fragile, like a stacked pile of china that is swaying back and forth, and if his knees buckle Steve wants to catch him. “God. I’m so fucking tired.”

“Buck,” Steve whispers, not sure what to say, not sure how to explain to him how big his goodness is, how it stretches over everything in Steve’s life like the sky over the ocean, tinting bright what, without him, was only gray and tumultuous. “How did you see it?” Steve asks after a moment. 

“Girl in my class mentioned it to me.”

“I’m sorry, Buck.”

When Bucky looks up, his chin trembles. “I’m not fucking fragile, Steve. I don’t need you to protect me from what shitty people say online.”

“I know you aren’t fragile, Bucky, I know. There was no point in bringing it up.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky says again, sounding so hurt.

“‘Cause it’s stupid, it’s just these freaks on the internet—”

“No it’s not!” Bucky snaps. He has drawn back from Steve now, arms crossed over himself, shaking. “That’s what fucking everyone thinks of us. Of me. You didn’t have to fucking lie to me about it, I’m used to getting called a slut.”

“Bucky,” Steve says softly. “Buck—”

“You treat me like I’m fucking explosive,” Bucky tells him. His whole body quivers, electrified.

Steve takes a hard breath. “That’s not fair.”

“Did you talk to Thor about how your boyfriend can’t handle anything the least bit hard?”

“Jesus Christ, Bucky,” Steve snaps, annoyed now. “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry I didn’t send you a link where fucking losers on the internet were saying things about you that aren’t true at all?”

“What are you gonna do, Steve, hide the entire fucking internet from me?”

“It was one article! I wouldn’t ever have seen it if he hadn’t sent it to me! You’re overreacting. I didn’t want to spend hours on the phone talking you through a panic attack ‘cause of what some nobody said, I’m sorry if that makes me a bad boyfriend.” He regrets it instantly, he doesn’t even mean it. His voice is raised the most it has been in the year and a half they’ve been back together and Bucky flinches a little at it and then looks so stung that Steve’s chest swoops.

Bucky casts him with a cold, hurt gaze. “Yeah. There you go.”

“Bucky, I didn’t—”

“I’m going to bed,” Bucky tells him. It’s only around eight-fifteen. “Come up if you want. Or don’t. I don’t care.” He leaves, the house too big for the sound of his footsteps. Steve presses his hands over his eyes, furious at himself.

Steve paces around the living room for a few minutes, then goes out for a walk. He doesn’t grab a jacket even though it is slightly too cold for June, so he walks fast along the park, his own shame hot on his heels.

He tries Sam, then Nat. Neither of them pick up. He considers calling Wanda but figures she is the most likely person that Bucky called and he doesn’t want to overstep into his source of comfort.

He hovers his finger over Scott’s name for a few moments, then hits call. If Bucky has talked to him, Steve figures, he doesn’t have to pick up. He just wants advice from someone older and smarter than him.

“Steve?” Scott says. “Everything alright?”

“Um,” Steve says, suddenly feeling awkward about his choice of call. “Yeah. Kinda. Buck and I had a fight and it’s my fault and I just wanted to know if you had any, um, advice.”

“Oh.” He sounds surprised. “Yeah, sure. Shoot.”

“Did he call you?” Steve asks.

“Nah.”

“Um, if he does call you, you can hang up on me, I don’t want to, um, steal his friends when he’s mad at me.”

Scott snorts. “Don’t worry, I will.” Steve believes it, too. He laughs weakly. “But you’re my friend too, Rogers. Hit me.”

Steve explains. When he finishes, the first thing Scott says is, “You aren’t cheating on him with Thor, right?”

“Jesus, Scott,” Steve says. “Give me some credit.” It rained earlier; the streets are streaked with the lingering spray of gold and red against wet asphalt, twinkling and shimmering like something more beautiful than wet cement.

“Alright, alright. I had to check. I didn’t think so,” Scott assures him. Steve laughs begrudgingly. “Well, I hate admitting this, but you are probably the person who knows Bucky best in the world so I don’t know if this will help you. But I also know him, and first of all, Bucky hates being treated like he’s fragile. It makes him feel weak and, um, I think it makes him feel like he’s lacking control, when people are hiding things from him.”

“I wasn’t hiding—”

“I know. I know. But that’s how he’s reacting to it especially since, you know, people were saying things about him. That stuff really, really gets to him, Steve.”

“I know,” Steve says weakly.

“I know you do. I… Bucky believes all that shit about himself, you know? Even now. It’s so much easier for him to listen to some asshole online calling him a whore or whatever then to us, ‘cause that’s what he’s wired to think. So that’s why he reacted like that, I think. He doesn’t get how you could think otherwise.”

“God,” Steve says, scrubbing a hand over his face. He’s so tired, every cell in his body lit and then extinguished in rage and consequential sadness for Bucky. He knows Bucky doesn’t like himself, that he has to work so, so hard for a clear image of who he is and even then, it falls short, but he is still distressed by hearing it like this. “I feel so shitty about what I said, Scott.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t your best. Look, you know you love Bucky, and I know you love Bucky, and Bucky knows it, but he’s always looking for confirmation that he’s bad and unwanted. And so seeing people call him things online and then—and I know you didn’t mean it—you saying something that suggests he’s a burden, um. He thinks that, and he thinks everyone thinks that already. It pushed him over the edge, I think.”

“God, I’m so fucking stupid.” Steve has turned back towards home and is walking slowly. A dog barks across the street. “I don’t—I don’t know why I said that. I don’t care, I’d comfort Bucky every second if he needed it, I don’t care. I just didn’t want to show him something that would hurt him.” He swallows, embarrassed by the desperation in his voice.

“I know, Steve. You’re not stupid. He—in my experience, it’s easy to get frustrated at Bucky when he’s saying things about himself that aren’t true, ‘cause you just wanna be as forceful as you can to convince him he’s wrong. But the only thing that helps him with that is gentleness, you know.”

“I know.” Steve pinches the bridge of his nose and tries not to think that he behaved like the men who hurt Bucky. “Can’t believe you’re not a shrink, you know.”

“Ha. Nah, I just know your boyfriend pretty well.” Steve smiles weakly into the darkness. “It’s alright, Steve. He’s not gonna dump you.”

“I know,” Steve says. “I just feel really, really bad.”

“I know. We all say things we don’t mean. It’s just a shitty situation.” A pause. “He loves you a lot, Steve. He’s really scared of you not loving him.”

“You… you know that’s an insane fear, right?” He is always appalled by the idea of that as any kind of possibility. Not loving Bucky is so absurd, so astronomically impossible that the fact that it manages to exist as a concept even in Bucky’s irrational anxieties surprises Steve.

“I do, dude. Talk to him, okay? Don’t let him go to bed feeling bad.”

“Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Scott.” They say goodbye and Steve walks the rest of the way home in a fast, anxious pace.

***

Bucky showers for forty-five minutes and then lies down, restless, heart hot in his throat. He feels like he could vibrate out of his skin with shame. He has to breathe hard against the desire to break a glass and put his palm to the shards. He hears Steve leave the house and he wants to cry but he doesn’t think he even deserves to cry, and he can’t sleep because there is an irrational and cruel part of him that is telling him if he falls asleep before Steve is back, he won’t be back at all. He feels awful for what he said. They have argued but it is never hurtful like this, and he feels like he has pushed Steve, finally, past his breaking point.

He sits up in their bed, rubbing Penny, and when the door finally, finally opens again, he realizes he’s been there for thirty-eight minutes. He swallows hard. His instinct is to go down and tell Steve it is okay to fuck him or hurt him, he’s sorry, he’ll take it, and it takes him several seconds to realize that’s wrong but even then he still considers it. Not having sex still exists to him as a privilege, something Steve could take away if Bucky is bad, and he has been.

Penny has been very close to him the whole time, but as Steve starts up the stairs, she sits up and worms closer into his side, a little reassurance. Bucky takes a shaky breath and then Steve is in the doorway. He doesn’t look angry; he is slightly pale, his hair a little disheveled. He leans into the doorframe.

“Hey,” Steve says.

“Hi,” Bucky says hoarsely.

Steve rubs his neck. “Can we talk?” 

Bucky nods. “I’m sorry,” he whispers before Steve can say anything else.

Steve says softly, “Me too.”

Timidly, Bucky pats Steve’s side of the bed. Steve smiles and takes a seat, awkward, not getting too close, knowing, apparently, where Bucky’s brain is going.

“I didn’t mean to not tell you, Buck,” Steve says softly. “I didn’t keep it from you ‘cause I think you’re fragile. I think you’re the single bravest person on the planet. I just—I didn’t want to say anything to you that would hurt you at all. And it was all stupid, it’s just some bullshit from some pieces of shit with nothing else to do with their time and it—it couldn’t be less true, and it not how anyone sees you.” He’s rambling, the words useless, trying to soothe all of the things in Bucky’s head that are thrashing. Bucky listens, knees pulled to his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says quietly. “I, um. You didn’t do anything wrong. I was overreacting.”

“It upset you,” Steve says. “It’s not an overreaction. I’m—I’m sorry I said that. All of it. I didn’t—I love you. I was upset because of this stupid fucking thing that came out and I hate seeing people… say things about you and I was frustrated but I shouldn’t have taken it out like that on you.”

Dating Steve after the men Bucky has known, the idea that Steve had taken anything out on him by snapping is absolutely laughable, but he doesn’t want to say that. “You didn’t do anything that bad, Steve,” he says weakly. “I’m not angry.” His anger supply is still out of sync with his brain, depleted even when there are a hundred reasonable targets for his rage, exploding on the person who least deserves it. It is gone now, waned away for flat, stale shame. He could be mad at Steve, but it feels like a waste of anger.

“I hurt your feelings,” Steve says quietly. “And I wasn’t totally honest. You can be mad, it’s okay. Especially about… about what I said.”

“If you, um.” Bucky’s hands move anxiously over the comforter; Steve reaches for them, glad when Bucky slots his fingers in with Steve and squeezes. “If you really feel like, um, you spend all your time comforting me—”

“No, Buck.” Steve squeezes his hands, very close to desperate. “Baby, I—that was shitty and stupid of me and totally, totally untrue. I just—I didn’t want to make you upset by something I thought could be avoided. But I’m really, really sorry.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Bucky says quietly. His body quivers like a plucked string with relief. “I think, um. When I see those things said about me, um. Maybe I push at you more. Like—like I know you aren’t gonna leave me for a movie star but—but I do feel like, why wouldn’t you want to be with literally anyone else? And sometimes I convince myself that other people don’t think that about us but—but they obviously do. And then, um. My brain just starts going, um, you’re gonna see that everyone thinks that and that’s gonna wake you up and so I’m being unfair to you, so if you leave I can blame it on that. And I know you aren’t gonna leave. But, yeah.”

Steve nods, eyes big and sad. “I know, baby. I’m sorry.” He pauses. Bucky focuses on the points where his hand ends and Steve begins, how it is supposed to be determined. The outlines of bodies are too thin for such things to matter. “I wish… I wish I could make this easier for you, Buck. I wish you could see yourself the way you really are.”

“All anyone is ever going to see me as is a whore.” Bucky looks down, the stitches on their comforter running blurry through sudden tears. “And—and why shouldn’t they? It’s true.”

“No, it isn’t,” Steve says, voice shaking a bit with the force of it. “Bucky, the things that happened to you were done to you. Nothing about it reflects on you.” Bucky shrugs, eyes down. “I know you, Buck. I’ve known you my whole life. You’ve always been incredibly, but you are… you’re just so remarkably brave and good. And anyone—anyone decent who speaks to you for more than three seconds knows that. Okay?”

Bucky chokes out as solid of a breath as he can. He doesn’t say okay because he doesn’t believe it and Steve knows he doesn’t believe it, but he kisses Steve’s knuckles, and Steve takes it as a signal to wrap him in his arms and hold onto him, kissing his forehead and rocking a bit.

“I thought you left,” Bucky says suddenly, voice caught. His body jerks with a silenced sob.

“Oh, Bucky. Fuck. I’m sorry baby, I’m so sorry.” He kisses Bucky again on the head. “I’d never, Buck. Never.”

“I know. I just—I don’t know.”

“Yeah.”

He counts to ten ten times. Steve holds him the entire time, not moving or pulling back.

“It’s important to me that everyone knows it’s more likely I’d cheat with Thor, though,” Bucky manages, when he’s gotten his voice steady enough.

Steve bursts out laughing. “You’re fucking terrible.”

Bucky smiles into his tee shirt. “Sorry, babe.”

“Have you eaten tonight?” Steve asks him.

Bucky shakes his head. It has not occurred to him until now to be hungry. “Can we order a pizza?”

Steve laughs. “Yeah. I’m starving. We can eat it here.”

“‘Kay,” Bucky whispers. They hold onto each other for a few moments more, reluctant to let go even for the brief time it takes to order a meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr love you all so so so much for your lovely words about this story


	34. thirty-four

A week later, walking out of a theater for a musical that Tony had bought Bucky and Steve tickets to, Steve says, “We’re throwing you a party.”

It’s eleven pm, and midtown is bright with its grimy late night sparkle. They are skirting on the outside of Times Square, the mugginess clinging to them like wet fabric. They’re a few blocks from the subway. Bucky doesn’t like it over here. It is too close to Scott and Wanda’s old apartment and the places where he would loiter in alleys to get bent over in the backs of cars or get on his knees behind an old apartment building, and he wants to get home. Steve knows this, and Bucky thinks he is distracting him.

“That’s ridiculous,” Bucky replies.

“It is not! This is a huge deal, Buck. Well worth a party.” He’s talking about Bucky’s story that’s being published later this week, that each time he thinks about, lodges something hard and anxious and surreal between his ribs.

Bucky laughs, partially because the man he loves just used the phrase ‘well worth,’ and pulls himself against Steve. “What’s the hierarchy for events deserving a party, huh?”

“Well,” Steve says, “you deserve a party every day. But especially this.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “You know your birthday’s coming up,” he says, diverting.

“Yeah, in three weeks. There’s no rule on how many parties we’re allowed to throw.”

Bucky laughs, letting more of his weight fall against Steve, so that his balance depends entirely on Steve’s presence. Steve tightens his arm over Bucky’s shoulder and kisses him on the cheek, grinning.

“It’s narcissistic to throw myself a party, Steve.”

“Hence why I am the one throwing it.”

“Oh, my god.”

“Buck.” Steve stops walking, making them the subject of irritated glances. “You should be proud of yourself. It’s worth celebrating.”

Bucky blushes and pulls Steve forward so they fall into a slower, even walk. “Sure.”

“Hey,” Steve says. “I love you so much.”

Bucky turns to him, his face light light blue in the Manhattan lights, dizzying and bright against the surging electricity and motion around them. “I love you, too,” he says, and kisses Steve even though it slows their pace.

***

Steve does throw him what Bucky only allows him to call a “get together” with their friends, a dinner in the backyard of brightly colored roasted vegetables over pasta and fruity drinks that Steve teases Bucky about. 

It has been published online by the time Bucky wakes up. He looks at it, reads his title and then his name underneath in distinguished font under the logo of a magazine he used to only imagine being published in, and a warm shot of pride catches him in the chest. Steve, who has already read the story, lies next to him and reads it again (“It’s a totally different experience seeing it published for real! You come to my galleries even though you’ve seen the paintings!”), making Bucky blush and shove him by reading his favorite lines aloud and afterwards, kissing his face and his nose and his neck while he giggles. 

That night, annoyingly, Steve prints the story out and puts it in the middle of the table with flowers. Everything feels light, the air and the food and the sugary drinks and the music from their tiny speakers and the warm, gentle hands on his back and shoulders as his friends congratulate him, and Bucky is happy.

Two weeks later, after class, T’Challa tells him to hang back again. The once unmanageable panic dulled to a dull, rhythmic hum in his chest, Bucky scratches at Penny’s ears and nods and texts Steve that he’s gonna be a little late for dinner.

When the class has filtered out, T’Challa smiles warmly at him and says, “Do you have a half hour to get a coffee right now?”

They go to a place Bucky has never been to about a block away. The caffeine is doing nothing to help the popping of anxiety in Bucky’s throat but he sips a latte through a candy-striped paper straw and waits, trying not to bounce his leg noticeably.

“So,” T’Challa starts. “Congratulations. I read the story. It’s very, very good.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says, with delighted embarrassment. He wants to kick himself at how easily he sways and crumbles at approval from men who have convinced him they aren’t going to hurt him. He takes another sip of the cold drink and hopes it offsets the flush on his cheeks.

“I’ve got a friend at Vulture,” T’Challa tells him. “She read it, to, and she wants to get you to do a piece for them.”

“Um,” Bucky says, his brain short-circuiting, for of all of the possibilities for why they were meeting, this one had not occurred to him. “Are you serious?”

“Mhm.” T’Challa sips his cold brew; Bucky waits for the catch. “I told her I’d bring it up to you, and if you were interested, I’d give her your email.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, and then, although he can guess already, and it’s making him feel instantly flushed with dread, “what’s the piece?”

T’Challa drops his gaze briefly. “She’s interested in hearing you write about… about your experience in court.”

Shame makes Bucky turn his head away. “I don’t think, um… I don’t think she actually does want to hear that.” It is startling to be spoken to about this by someone who is not a core part of his life. It leaves him feeling brutally vulnerable. He traces the logo on his cup, reveling in the uncomfortable chill on his thumb.

“Bucky,” T’Challa says gently. “Please, tell me if I’m overstepping at all. I wouldn’t normally do anything like this with students, but I just… I thought it was too big of an opportunity not to let you know about, at least. I’m not interested in pressuring you to write about something you don’t want to, especially something painful. She won’t mind if you don’t. I just wanted to give you the opportunity.”

“I, um.” Bucky drums his fingers on the table, too fast. “Professor, um. I got… I got really harassed last year. My boyfriend and I got, um, death threats. People still… people still say things about it to me, um. I don’t want to open that door again.” His heart hammers against his chest, panicked he’s being disrespectful. He takes a short breath and another sip of coffee; he is at the watery, weak remains of it.

“I imagine,” T’Challa says thoughtfully. “Listen, Bucky. There’s no pressure from me. I won’t give her your email if you don’t want me to. I just… I think it’s worth it to tell you that you’re—twenty-three?”

“Twenty-two,” Bucky says quietly, then worries it’s bragging.

T’Challa smiles. “Twenty-two years old, you’ve been published in Harpers, and you’re getting an offer from Vulture right now. That’s remarkable. I have no doubt that there will be other opportunities for you, I just want to let you know that this is something very special. There’s no need to put yourself through something that will be damaging for you, in fact, I’d insist not to. But at the very least you should be proud that a contributor at the a serious publication read something you wrote and wants to get something else from you.” Despite himself, Bucky smiles.

“How, um, how’d she know to talk to you?”

“I sent your piece to her. I hope that’s alright.” Bucky nods a little too eagerly. “She’s a very good friend of mine. She used to teach at the New School, we discuss our students a lot.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says weakly. His cheeks are warm. “Could, um. Could I think about it?”

“Sure,” T’Challa says. “I can send you her email, if you like.” Bucky nods, and T’Challa stands. “I should be getting home.” He gives Bucky a bracing, fatherly pat on the shoulder and says, “Thank you for chatting. And I’m very serious—no pressure at all. I’ve got no doubt you’ll have a lot of success regardless of whether or not you write this particular piece.

***

“Sorry I’m late,” Bucky says, pecking Steve quickly on the lips. They’re outside a burger place a few blocks from their apartment, Steve leaning against the wall waiting for him.

“No problem.” He puts an arm around Bucky’s waist to go inside. “What was that about?”

Bucky says, a little out of breath, “Vulture, um. Wants me to write a piece for them, um. About the trial, and stuff.”

Steve blanches. “What?” he says, so startled that he ignores the hostess trying to seat them until Bucky nudges him into following her. “Wait, go back.”

Bucky looks slightly frazzled; he sits across from Steve, sweeping his hair back quickly, his hands anxious. After he explains the offer, Steve leans back and says, “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says nervously. “Um. Yeah.”

“I… what do you think?”

They are holding hands over the table, and Bucky releases and constricts his grip. “I mean. I don’t… I don’t really want to write about that.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, a little heatedly. The idea of someone prodding into Bucky’s life and trauma for clicks on a prestigious website sends a ripple of unsettlement through him. “You don’t have to.”

Bucky smiles vaguely. “I know, Steve.”

Smiling, Steve pulls Bucky’s hands across the table and kisses both of them. “That’s pretty huge, Buck.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I, um, am having a hard time processing it.”

“You’re amazing,” Steve says, and smiles so warmly that Bucky has to look at their hands, the part of him that is trying to be compassionate and warm to himself straining under the words. “I’m so glad everyone can see that.”

They eat their remarkably realistic fake burgers and drink some shakes, then go home and play a few rounds of Mario Kart against each other until Bucky, yawning, sets his controller aside and leans on Steve. He plays for a few more minutes, one handed with his arm around Bucky, half asleep on his shoulder, and loses spectacularly until he’s ready for bed. He is about to nudge Bucky awake when his phone buzzes.

“Hey, Clint,” Steve says, stifling the annoyance at being called at eleven. “What’s up?”

“Hey, Steve. Sorry to call so late, but…” He launches into a convoluted explanation of how Steve needs to choose which pieces he wants to be sold on postcards and tee shirts in the gift shops for his exhibits, and Steve listens vaguely, playing with Bucky’s hair, smiling when Bucky hugs him tighter around the middle.

“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Alright, thanks. Haven’t seen you in a minute. How was Cali?”

“Um, fine. I’m sleeping with Thor Odinson apparently.”

Clint snorts. “Yeah, I’m aware. Did you want me to release a statement? Didn’t seem worth it.”

“No. It’s dumb.”

“How are you and Bucky?”

“We’re good. He’s getting courted by Vulture for a piece.”

“No shit,” Clint says, suddenly interested. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. I don’t think he’s gonna do it.”

Pained silence. “Look, I know I represent you and not your boyfriend, but that would be a stupid thing to turn down. He’s like fifteen years old with no college degree and a Vulture is asking him to write them a piece?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “They want him to write about the Pierce case and stuff.” Bucky twitches a bit in his sleep; Steve rubs his back.

“Ah,” Clint says.

“Yeah.”

Thoughtful, building silence. “Um. Have you heard from Hollywood about your biopic?”

“God. No. Why?”

“Well, this isn’t my area of expertise, but I do think that if Bucky were to release a piece like that, the rights to the story wouldn’t be up for grabs anymore.”

Steve straightens a bit. “What?”

“Yeah, I mean, I’ll have to double check this a bit more, but my sense of it is once something like that is released anywhere, all of the content in it is owned by the company who releases it.”

“That…” Steve blinks several times. “Really? That makes no sense.”

“I might be wrong, but I’m usually not.” 

“Do you mind, um, sending me some information about that? If you have it.”

“Sure. I’ll do some digging and try to figure it out.”

“Thanks.”

“That’s what you pay me for. Choose those merch images.”

“No one buys those,” Steve says, but Clint has hung up. He sets his phone aside wearily and, with some effort, shifts Bucky into his arms to pick him up. Bucky stirs vaguely, kisses Steve’s shoulder, and closes his eyes again.

“Who ‘as that,” he mumbles, when Steve is halfway upstairs with him, Penny watching anxiously to make sure Steve doesn’t drop him.

“Clint,” Steve says. “He chewed me out for not answering an email. He had an interesting thought, though. I’ll tell you in the morning.” He sets Bucky down as gently as possible and lays down beside him.

“‘Kay,” Bucky says, tired enough to be satisfied with that answer. “Thanks for carrying me. I love you.”

“Love you too, angel.”

As he falls asleep, Bucky snuggled against his chest, his breathing soft and even, Steve thinks back one year earlier to the trial and what it had done to them to be under a sizzling spotlight like that, how much it had choked them, their names and faces on the fronts of tabloids, the unshakable stares in coffee shops and grocery stores. His breath is swept away remembering the misery of that, the exhaustion, remembering how it had been even worse for Bucky, flinching and shrinking, reduced to sobbing under particularly cruel headlines. He wants them to be free of that, this time. He brushes a kiss against Bucky’s temple and longs for it.

***

Steve does indeed relay the information to Bucky the next morning. They go to brunch at their diner and when Steve explains, Bucky pales a little.

“Jesus Christ,” he says.

Steve grimaces. “Yeah.”

Bucky sifts a strawberry back and forth across his plate. “That, um. Would probably change things.”

“Yep,” Steve says weakly.

Bucky sighs, his shoulders lifting. He trains an anxious look on Steve, eyes bright. “What do you think?”

“I think you should do what you feel comfortable doing,” Steve says, immediate and truthful. Bucky gives him a half hearted smile. “I mean it.”

Bucky says, “But we should see what Clint says.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees weakly. “We probably should.”

What Clint says, confined to an email they read that evening on their back porch after dinner, is this.

_cbarton@hawkmanagement.com_

_Re: Life rights_

_Steve—_

_So, everything is incredibly unclear about this because the laws aren’t totally cut and dry, but I talked to a friend who works more in this stuff._

_Basically, you and Bucky are public figures in the sense that your names, faces, and information about you has been made public. In that sense, everything that was reported on is fair game for movies, articles, books, critically acclaimed mini series’, etc. Where it gets complicated is all of the things about you that aren't public—you own that, and fictionalizing that w/o your consent could lead to serious lawsuits. Technically, they’re not supposed to make up info about your friends/families/hobbies/anything not really related to the case and what was reported on. That said, movie studios are good at handling that stuff to get around it—look no further than The Social Network. I imagine if this is becoming an actual serious Hollywood idea, offers will start rolling in at some point for lots of money to say whatever they want, but I could be wrong._

_So re: the article—if a story was published by Bucky (or you) with enough information that hadn’t been made public, that would be a pretty sure stop to any movies being released without your consent for whatever that’s worth. It would be even better if it were something more obviously a narrative, like a podcast or book, but I’m pretty sure a long article would at the very least complicate things in terms of directors’ abilities to use you without any approval. Once that happens, I imagine you’ll also get a lot of offers for the rights—that would have to be negotiated with Vulture or whatever publication releases it._

_If it’s any consolation, I would honestly assume you two would be portrayed pretty well in the movie; I imagine Alexander’s people are extremely invested in putting a stop to this._

_Let me know if there’s anything else I can do._

_Clint_

“Huh,” Steve says vaguely, when they’ve finished reading it.

Bucky squirms a little in Steve’s arms, uncomfortable. “Huh indeed.” He leans his head onto Steve’s shoulder and adds, “Can you fucking believe this happened to us?”

Steve barks out a weak laugh. “What part?”

Bucky makes an all-encompassing gesture with his hands. “God.” He leans back into Steve and is quiet.

“What?” Steve says softly.

Bucky shakes his head. “I don’t know. Nothing.” A long, pregnant pause. “I don’t think people were meant to be consumed.”

***

T’Challa sends him the journalist’s email that afternoon. _Bucky,_ he writes, _My friend’s email is hope.van_dyne@nymag.com. I’ve let her know you might reach out._

_Also, I wanted to apologize if I made you at all uncomfortable. My wife pointed out that it seemed like an invasion of your personal life to bring that up to you, and I’m afraid she’s right. I wanted to let you know about an offer that you should be proud of getting, but if I forced you to talk about something you didn’t want to discuss with me, I apologize. I’ve enjoyed having you in my classes tremendously over these last few months. You are a fantastic writer._

_At the risk of doing exactly what I just apologized for, my wife and I would love to have you and your boyfriend over for dinner sometime this summer. I’ve very much enjoyed working in and out of class with you and my wife wants to meet you. Absolutely no pressure, of course._

_Best,_

_T’Challa_

Bucky smiles at the email, then reads it two more times. He replies saying thank you so much, your classes have meant so much to me, you weren’t overstepping at all and Steve and I would love to come to dinner, then, tentatively, clicks on Hope’s email.

***

“So,” he tells Steve, “I emailed her.”

Steve, tossing back a glass of post-run water, swallows too fast and widens his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Yep.” Bucky rocks his weight, pressing his palms onto the counter, a surge of something hot and electric coursing through him. “She wants to meet me tomorrow.”

“Oh, wow,” Steve says. Bucky crosses the room and puts his arms around him, even though he’s still sweating. Steve, surprised, hugs him back. “You okay?”

“Mhm,” Bucky says, unable to explain the emotion that has suddenly racked him, just holds onto Steve and tries to fight back the conviction that everything he is doing is a joke and a trick and something he will regret.

***

Hope van Dyne lives in Downtown Brooklyn, so she and Bucky meet at a cafe on fifth avenue. She is about Scott’s age and very intimidating, cooly professional and put together, tapping into a phone when Bucky spots her from down the block. She has dark hair pulled into an important looking ponytail and dark lipstick, but she smiles warmly when she sees Bucky.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she tells him, with a manicured handshake. “Thanks for coming.”

“Yeah, of course,” Bucky says, feeling wildly undeserving of this meeting, feeling shocked that she isn’t outwardly scoffing at him. He tugs Penny a little closer. 

She makes small talk with him that feels like a test—you’re in Park Slope? Oh, I love it over there, what street? My parents live close to there actually… so you’ve been taking classes with T’Challa for how long? Isn’t he great? She has the striking quality of being fully focused on what he’s saying which leaves him feeling deeply observed, almost scrutinized, but she is never anything less than warm.

“So,” Hope says finally, “this piece.” Bucky straightens up a bit. “Are you interested?”

“I, um, I think so.” Bucky taps his fingers against the table, a flash of blue nail polish. “What—what do you want, exactly?”

“I,” she says, tapping her nails quickly, “think you could write a great, important, relevant piece about your experience last year. Whatever part of it you feel compelled to write about.”

“Why do you—um—why?” Bucky asks idiotically. She laughs, and he blushes. “I mean.. I’m not… a journalist or anything, um. I don’t think I’m up to your usual, like, qualifications. Why do you want me to write this?”

She says easily, “Clearly, you’re a good writer, and T’Challa raved about your work” —Bucky blushes deeper— “and I care a lot about stories like this. I think what you did was exceptionally admirable, and I know you and your partner haven’t commented much on it, publicly, but I think if you want to, you could write a really interesting, compelling piece about it. We’d give you a lot of freedom with it.”

“Would you be the one editing it?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there a, um, timeline for this?”

“Ideally, you could get us a draft in the next four weeks.”

Bucky nods slowly. “Um. Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He pauses, anxious. “There’s, um, one other thing.” She nods. “If I do this, Vulture can’t sell any rights to it without, um. Talking to me.”

“Oh.” She sounds surprised. “That’s not my area, but sure. I’m sure that will be fine.” She pauses, thoughtful. “I’d love for you to do this piece,” she says, “but if your goal is to have the rights to it, and you don’t want to write it now, I bet publishing companies would be interested.”

Bucky blinks, bewildered. “I, um. I have, like, no credentials—”

She waves a hand. “That doesn’t matter. It—you have a compelling story. It could help a lot of people.” Bucky blushes and drops his gaze to the table. “Book publications would be dying for it. It seems like you can write, but even if you couldn’t, you’d make a fortune off of something ghostwritten and everyone would be trying to publish it.”

“I, um,” Bucky says carefully. “This isn’t something I really want to… to write about, right now, like that. I mean, an article is one thing.”

“I don’t want to pressure you into this,” she says seriously. “If you don’t want to, I won’t be offended.”

***

Steve is there when Bucky gets home, waiting anxiously. “How’d it go?” he asks, swooping in to kiss him on the cheek. “What’d she say?”

Bucky rubs his temple. “Can we sit?”

“Yeah,” Steve says breathlessly, and they settle onto the couch.

“Um,” he says. “I told her yes.”

Steve raises his eyebrows. “Wow.”

“Is that okay?”

“Yeah! Yeah, of course. I just… it wasn’t what I thought you were gonna say, to be honest.”

“Yeah. Me neither.” Pearly light streams in, bouncing off of Steve’s copper coffee cup, making Penny’s fur lighter, the color of chestnut. “Um. I don’t know. I… she’s really nice. Or really good at her job. But she made it sound… manageable.” He pauses. “And, um, she told me they probably won’t sell the rights.”

“Probably?”

Bucky leans into Steve so his back presses into Steve’s chest, so he can tilt his head back and rest on Steve’s shoulder. “Yeah. She doesn’t… totally know. She said I could um, negotiate.” He bites his lip. “God, this is weird.”

“And you… you wanna do this?” Steve says anxiously. “‘Cause Buck, I don’t want you to put yourself through something just for like, legal reasons, we can figure this stuff out another way—”

“No, I know,” Bucky reassures him quietly. “I, um. I kind of want to anyway.” Steve’s hand is lying over his; Bucky folds them together and squeezes. “She said, um, she thinks it might help people.”

Steve waits a few moments before saying, “Yeah, it would. But it’s not your job to make yourself suffer so someone else to help people. I mean… you are… the only thing that matters is your well being, okay?”

Bucky sighs, turning his head to the side so his cheek brushes Steve’s shirt. “I know. Kind of.” A cloud has passed over the sun, casing the room in soft, easier gray. “I’ve thought about writing about… about everything for a while.” He can feel the reassuring thrum of Steve’s heart against his cheek. Steve squeezes him on the arm. “I mean, I guess I kind of have already, just… just not, um, me, you know? Like I’ll write fiction and it’s, um, so obviously a projection. And it’s easier to be, like, compassionate to characters than to myself. And I kind of do want to see what it feels like, you know? I, um, didn’t think anyone was interested in hearing it, though.”

“Buck,” Steve says. “You’re just… you’re spectacular. People are definitely interested. Everyone who’s ever learned from you is better because of it.” Bucky closes his eyes and smiles a little. “Did she give you a timeline?”

“She said they’d hope for a draft in six weeks. They want like six thousand words.”

“Is that a lot?”

Bucky laughs. “Six weeks is more than enough time.”

“That’s good, Buck,” Steve says softly. “I’m so proud of you.”

Bucky kisses Steve lightly and rests his head in the crook of his shoulder. They sit there in the faint brassy glow of their fairy lights, their bodies close and warm, listening to each other breathing and the faint distant roll of cars coming down their block.

“It’s still not… confirmed that an article will stop somewhere from using us in a movie,” Bucky says quietly.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Actually, um. I was talking to Thor about that today. And we had this idea.”

Bucky lifts his chin to look at Steve. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I don’t know about it, but, um. It might be the best we’re gonna get.”

***

“I don’t know if this is going to work,” Bucky says, for probably the fourth time.

Two days later, he and Steve are coming out of the subway at Chambers Street into too-bright summer sun. Steve squeezes his hand.

“There’s nothing really to lose, right?”

They’re on their way to the Sarabeth’s in Greenwich, where they are meeting Thor and, intimidatingly, his brother. They have a vague idea that they are going to try and execute in a way that doesn’t blow up in their faces.

Bucky nods vaguely, squinting against the heat into boutiques and tattoo parlours and expensive brunch places like the one they are on their way too. It’s nine-fifty, too early to be in Manhattan. Penny trots along, happily oblivious.

When they arrive three minutes later, Thor and Loki are outside, standing a few feet apart and looking vaguely irritated with each other. Thor lifts his hand and smiles warmly, and Loki nods. He is wearing a black suit that looks unbearable in the heat, more like some kind of caricature of a secret service agent.

“Steve,” he says stiffly. “Bucky.”

“Hi,” Steve says, and then, warmer, “hi, Thor.” He smiles and lifts a hand. “Shall we?”

They are settled at a four person table in the middle of the restaurant, drawing stares. Thor smiles at a table of people trying to take a discreet photo of him, and they dissolve into embarrassment, checking their nails, talking too animatedly.

“So,” Loki says, putting on what he clearly thinks is charm. “I hear you have a proposition for me.”

“Kind of,” Steve says. Bucky is bouncing his knee incessantly under the table; gently, Steve taps it to stop him. He slows it. “We aren’t giving you help for a movie.”

Loki raises an eyebrow. “Alright.”

“Bucky,” Steve goes on, “is releasing a piece about last year.”

Loki glances at them, then at Thor, unimpressed. “Congratulations,” he says shortly.

“Thanks,” Bucky says, nervous. 

“Which means you won’t have the rights to anything anymore.”

Loki rubs his nose. “Not technically, you know—”

“Maybe not,” Bucky says, a little braver. “But it will look pretty awful, releasing a movie about two actual people without their consent after they’ve spoken out about it.”

“After you have,” Steve says proudly. Bucky bites his lip against smiling. Loki rolls his eyes. “Anyway,” Steve goes on. “It will make it harder for you to do, legally.”

“Why are you even here?” Loki asks Thor bitchily. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“Peacemaker,” Thor says calmly.

“Obviously, you are on their side.”

“Shut up and listen.”

Loki sighs dramatically, but complies.

“Anyway,” Steve says, “like you said, there are still ways around it. And we don’t really want Scott Rudin or someone swooping in with a team of lawyers to try to find a way to capitalize off of it.” Loki raises his eyebrows, interested. “We think you can have it,” Steve says. “Under a lot of conditions.”

“Do you two have a lawyer?” Loki says, unimpressed. And then, angry, “Jesus!” Thor kicked him under the table. “Fine. This is… very interesting. What are your conditions?”

“You can’t do anything with it for five years,” Bucky says.

Loki snorts. “Right.”

“Movie deals fall through all the time,” Thor offers up, his area of expertise. “Lots of films have the rights purchased and then never get made. Weren’t you gonna work on an adaptation of that Donna Tartt novel?” Privately, Bucky mourns that loss. “It’ll be like one of those, but eventually, it comes out. Maybe. You’re more than welcome to change your mind.”

Loki looks between the three of them, astonished. “Why would I agree to this?”

“It makes you look good,” Steve says. “You got a gay couple in their early twenties who went through a trauma to give you the rights to that story? That’s impressive.”

“We aren’t gonna sign anything with anyone else,” Bucky adds. “It’ll look like a big success for you.”

“And,” Thor adds, “if eventually, you do decide to make it, I’ll join on.”

Loki watches him, eyes narrowed. “What, you’re gonna play him?” He jerks a thumb towards Steve. Thor shrugs.

“Sure. I know this’ll be good for you. A reconciliation between brothers helping two kids who went through a tragedy? That’s a nice story. I’d even walk a red carpet with you. You can announce that I’m in it as soon as Bucky’s piece is released and we say you’ve bought it.” Thor grins, enjoying this. “I’d go so far as to say I’d consider actually acting in one of your movies.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Loki snaps. 

“Your people have contacted me for your last three films.”

Loki reddens slightly. “You think I’m going to pay you two for rights to a movie you say I can’t make?”

“Technically, you can make it in a long time.”

“Besides, this is nothing but a reputation booster for you,” Bucky adds.

“I have a great reputation,” Loki says irritably.

“There are a lot of actors who hate you,” Thor reminds him. “You know this is a good deal.”

Loki taps his pale hand against the tablecloth. “There’s nothing to stop me from agreeing to this and making a movie next year anyway, you know.”

“If you do that, I’ll tell all of my important friends and colleagues never to work with you,” Thor says cheerfully.

“Also,” Steve adds, “we want to be able to review a script. So that, you know, if you tried to do that, you couldn’t.” The waiter materializes with their coffees. “Thanks,” Steve says, smiling brightly.

Loki has his arms crossed over his chest, skeptical. “Why offer this deal to me, then?” he asks, mostly to Bucky. “Why not write your article and not let anyone buy the rights?”

“You said it,” Bucky answers. “There are ways around articles. But if the narrative is that someone owns this project, I don’t think anyone else will try to find any loopholes.”

“Also, I think you’re the only one who will let us have complete veto power over a script.”

“You understand you’re basically asking me to allow you to stop this from ever happening if you don’t like it? No producer has ever agreed to anything like this.”

“I’m sure they have,” Steve says. “And also, it seems fair. You’re asking us to help you profit off of the worst thing that ever happened to us.”

“Besides,” says Thor, “then it will still be yours, and not Weinstein’s or Nolan’s or Spielberg’s.”

Loki bristles a bit. “You two,” he says to Bucky and Steve, “are flattering yourselves an awful lot. Contrary to what you might think, producers and directors have other things going on besides sitting around scheming how to make a romance movie about you two.”

“Great,” Steve says. “Let’s keep it that way.”

Loki sighs, like he can’t imagine a bigger hardship. “What about you?” he says to Thor. “What’s your angle here?”

“Oh, nothing,” Thor says. “I’m quite fond of Steve and Bucky, though. Happy to help them not get exploited by people like us, huh?” He claps Loki cheerfully on the shoulder and Loki brushes him off. Bucky blushes; Steve elbows him discreetly.

“And you think Vulture is going to agree to this? You understand that traditionally, the publication get a cut of whatever is being bought? If you’re really saying you’ll sell this to me for cheaper—”

“I already talked to them,” Bucky says. “They’ll agree.”

“Bucky’s writing is worth a lot more than anything you could pay for it,” Steve adds. Bucky smiles at him.

“Christ,” says Loki, rolling his eyes. “Look. Sure.”

“Really?” Bucky says. For all of the discussions they’d had about this, all the conviction from Thor that it was a good plan, he had not expected it to go this smoothly.

“Yes. Fine. You have to say something about how I’m great to work with and that’s why you trust me to tell your story effectively.”

“Deal,” Steve says.

“And you,” Loki tells Thor, “have to have your assistant send a few bantering tweets my way so people know we’re on good terms.”

“Aw, brother,” Thor says, “you’re too kind.” Loki scowls.

“If we’re done here,” Loki says tartly, honest to god dusting his shoulders off, “I don’t think I’ll be hanging around. It’s been a pleasure.” He gives them all cold, irritated looks before tossing a twenty down and striding out.

Steve and Bucky blink at one another. Thor, cheerfully, says, “Frankly that went better than I thought it would.”

“Do you think he’s serious?” Steve asks cautiously.

“You can never know with him. But I think he knows this is a good deal with him, which is really the thing that matters for Loki.” Thor smiles and says, “This calls for a round of mimosas, doesn’t it?”

That night, while Steve is brushing his teeth and Bucky is rubbing expensive cream into his face, Bucky says, not for the first time, “This is so fucking weird.”

Steve spits toothpaste out and says, “Which part?” He smiles a little.

“At no point in my life did I ever think you and I would be trying to cut a deal with a Hollywood producer so a movie about us doesn’t get made.”

“Speak for yourself. I thought about it all the time.”

Bucky laughs, and so does Steve. Leaning into Steve’s arms, he says, “God.

“I know…” Steve starts carefully, “I know that, um. Our lives are sometimes just one absurd thing to be dealing with after another” Bucky huffs out a laugh “but there was a part of me that thought it was very fun today. You know?”

Bucky bursts out laughing, then buries his face in Steve’s shoulder. “Once it seemed like it was working, it was fun.” A pause where they hold each other, their reflections swaying in the mirror. “I always have fun with—”

“If you say Thor, I swear to god—”

“I was gonna say _you_ ,” Bucky protests, giggling.

“You were not.”

“I was! I swear!”

Steve grins. “In that case…” he says, and kisses Bucky on the mouth, slow and tremulous until Bucky kisses him back, the clean, welcoming smell of mint still in the air, steam still melting off the shower, the world briefly and perfectly still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr you are all so lovely for leaving your comments and messages hope you're all safe and happy


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